


Rey Makes (Ben's Heart Beat Faster)

by always_a_queen



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23921020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_a_queen/pseuds/always_a_queen
Summary: “Hi, I’m Rey, we’re in the test kitchen and today we’re making…” Rey pauses for dramatic effect, giving a bright smile to the camera. “…gourmet Almond Joy.”//In which Rey is the quirky host of the webseries Rey Makes, and Ben Solo is her camera-shy coworker who keeps accidentally ending up in her videos.//a Rey/Ben bon appetit au
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 95
Kudos: 239
Collections: REYLO WEEK 2020





	1. almond joy.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohemgeeitscoley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohemgeeitscoley/gifts).



> Written for Reylo week 2020, Day Four: AU: **Crossover / Modern.**
> 
> Yup.
> 
> I wrote [a bon appetit au](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbpMy0Fg74eXXkvxJrtEn3w). Clearly I have lost my mind.
> 
> Thanks and love to @ohemgeeitscoley for being an excellent beta and a wonderful cheerleader and for holding my hand through all of this and listening to me cry about Star Wars in general and these two in specific. This fic wouldn’t exist without you, babe. You’re a terrible influence on me. Please never stop. We're a dyad in the force, and I don't want to imagine my fandom life without you.

_ _

_ Rey Makes  _ ~~_ Gourmet Almond Joy _ __ ~~

_ (Ben’s Heart Beat Faster) _

* * *

“Hi, I’m Rey, we’re in the RA test kitchen and today we’re making…” Rey pauses for dramatic effect, giving a bright smile to the camera. “...gourmet Almond Joy.”

Finn gives Rey a thumbs up. Finn Storm has only been Rey’s cameraman/director extraordinaire working with her at the Rebel Alliance Test Kitchen for the past six months—about as long as Rey has been breaking down candies and snack foods to their base components to remake them into her own new gourmet creations. 

For fun.

And YouForce views. 

Honestly, some weeks there isn’t really that much fun. This week is Almond Joy. Rey’s already not looking forward to making an attempt to temper the chocolate.

Tempering chocolate is the worst. She has yet to do it successfully on camera.

“I’ve never had an Almond Joy,” Rey confesses for the camera, twisting the blue wrapper open at one end. She gets so many comments about how methodical she is when she’s trying to pick apart a food down to its basic components so she can figure out how to recreate it. 

In this case, she doesn’t think it’s going to be too hard: toast some almonds, make the coconut filling, and then cover it all in chocolate. Which she hopefully does not have to temper.

Except she probably  _ does _ . Her producers like to see her suffer. It gives the show pathos. Or something.

Rey bites into a tiny corner of the candy. The chocolate is very sweet, and so is the coconut inside. She talks through the texture a bit for the camera, letting Finn zoom in on her hands as she places the mini Almond Joy next to the fun size and the bar size for comparison. There aren’t eight million variations of this particular snack to try to narrow down. It’s just the one flavor. 

She’s reaching for a paring knife to cut the bar crosswise when Finn waving his hand catches her eye.

“Grab Ben,” Finn mouths, gesturing to the tall chef calmly walking around the filming setup to get to the other side of the test kitchen.

Rey doesn’t particularly  _ want _ to grab Ben, but she keeps that desire off of her face, hoping Finn cuts this bit in post. Ben seems to have figured out that he’s been noticed, and he gives her a quick look before making a failing attempt to move faster.

“Ben!” she says, catching him as he starts to pass her station. He’s always trying not to get caught on the camera. It’s ridiculous, because the fans  _ love _ him. Every single upload that Ben is in gets twice as many hits, even though he really doesn’t like it.

Rey smiles at him. “Here,” she says, lifting his hand and placing an unwrapped Almond Joy in his palm. “We’re doing Almond Joy this week.”

He looks first at the candy, then at her. He does  _ not _ glance at the camera, or even acknowledge its existence. He picks the candy up and lifts it to his nose, taking a careful sniff. When he tastes it, he takes the tiniest bite possible.

Rey thinks it’s ridiculous that for such a large man—and he is large, tall with broad-shoulders—he nibbles on foods like a mouse. 

“It’s very sweet,” he says. “Not a lot of almond flavor.” After another bite, he continues, “There’s room for improvement. Bring out more of the coconut.”

Again, he doesn’t look at the camera, but Rey hears them moving, probably trying to get a better angle on Ben. He’s never really been cooperative with the crew.

Regardless, Ben  _ always _ has good advice, so… “Do you think I should use darker chocolate?”

Ben studies the half-eaten bar in his hands, breaking it apart so he can taste the chocolate by itself. “I would go darker,” he agrees, finally. “I think it’ll bring out more of the flavors of the almond.”

“Thanks, Ben,” Rey smiles at him. She smiles at all her coworkers as they move in and out of her videos. “I’ll make sure I save you one to try when they’re all done.”

A warm expression crosses his face, and his eyes soften as they meet hers. “Thank you,” he tells Rey.

And then he’s walking away. Rey watches him go. He’s in black jeans and a grey henley today, mostly hidden by his usual brown apron. His hair is braided back, and she can’t help but envy how good it looks.

She lives a messy bun life, generally three of them. It’s become a signature part of the show. That’s Rey: vertical stack of buns in her hair, chaotically making gourmet junk foods, failing a bunch of times on camera, and being surrounded by the rest of the zany characters in the RA Test Kitchen.

It’s just a normal Tuesday, and Rey has more people to interview. First is Maz Kanata, a tiny little African American woman who wrinkles her nose and tells Rey that the Almond Joy is so sweet it’s overpowering (a sentiment Rey thinks she’ll be hearing quite often for the rest of the day) and then there’s Poe, who really doesn’t offer her much information about the candy. He just leans over, resting his elbows on her workspace and plays with the packaging, retelling some story about Halloween that Finn eats up.

Rey is taking measurements of the bars and writing them down in her notebook, when Rose shows up. “You’re going to nail this one, Rey,” Rose says, taking her second bite of Almond Joy. “I can  _ feel  _ it. This is exciting!”

A few others stop by, and Finn gets plenty of footage of her coworkers offering tips and suggestions. Each of them periodically have their turn in front of the camera for hands-on instructional videos, though none as often as Rey.

It’s a running gag for Rey to try to clear off the massive quantity of snacks from her workstation after they’ve gotten enough footage of her chatting with the test kitchen and giving her thoughts on the snack.

This time, she tries to stack several of the mini-bags onto two boxes of the candy so she can hold that with one arm, and then hold a bowl full of king sized bars with her other arm. It goes about as well as it always does, with Rey gingerly taking steps towards the opposite counter. This time, she’s even using her chin to hold one of the backs in place, and because of that—

“Rey!”

She hears Finn say her name, but it comes too late, because Ben is suddenly in front of her, the candy is all over the floor, and his hands are on both of her elbows to keep her from falling flat on her face.

Rey swears her cheeks turn bright red. It’ll be fine, she tells herself. They’ll get another shot of this in a few minutes, and no one will ever see it.

“I’m sorry,” Ben is saying, and before Rey can stop him, he’s kneeling down on the floor in front of her, gathering the scattered packages up into his arms. “Let me help.”

She blinks at him in surprise. It only lasts a second before she’s bending down to help gather up the Almond Joy. “Don’t worry about it, Ben,” she tells him.

“You should make trips,” he says a little gruffly, and she almost  _ laughs _ . She would, under normal circumstances, make trips. Or, heaven forbid, one of the crew could  _ help _ her.

It doesn’t matter. She’ll take Ben’s help and then Finn will have her re-do the shot in a minute. Still. It’s nice. His innate kindness.

She’s long suspected there was a goodness to Ben Solo that others missed behind his aloofness. People tend to mischaracterize him as sullen, but in the six months she’s been at the Test Kitchen, she’s yet to see him actually  _ sulk _ . Or brood. He’s just pensive. Quiet. Thoughtful.

And again, she thinks as he helps her move everything to the opposite counter:  _ kind _ .

Once he’s gone, she turns back to Finn, fully expecting a reset.

“Nope,” he says with a grin. “I just need a shot of you giving me the goals for tomorrow.”

“Right,” Rey says, hoping her voice sounds less shaky than she feels. “I think the goal for tomorrow will be working on perfecting the coconut filling, toasting some almonds, and if all goes well we might just get all the way to the chocolate. It could happen.”

It has never once in the history of her show happened that a shoot has only taken two days, but Rey’s feeling flustered and optimistic. “We’ll start with cracking open some coconuts.”

Finn flashes her a smile when he says: “That’s a wrap for today. We’ll pick up tomorrow morning.”

Rey wonders what the kitchen’s stash of coconuts looks like. She’s not sure how often they use fresh coconut, but she really wants to use it for this episode. She’ll have to arrive a little bit before her call time so she can poke around and see what she can find.

She’s waiting for the elevator when Ben comes up beside her, hands shoved into the pockets of his dark wool coat. He glances down at her, but doesn’t say a word.

“You know that’s a  _ bit _ , right?” Rey finally asks. “I try to carry everything from my workstation to the window counter in one go? We do it once an episode.”

He looks away. “They should let you take trips. Or not include it at all.”

“I don’t mind,” Rey says, but even as she says it she knows that she  _ does _ mind. She just doesn’t want to give voice to it only to be shot down. They step onto the elevator together, and Ben pushes the button for the lobby. “What are you working on right now?”

“Every way to cook a steak,” Ben replies quietly. 

“Oh,” Rey says. She’s heard a little about this project that Leia is trying to talk him into. “Well there can’t be that many—”

“Thirty-eight,” Ben interrupts. “We’ve brainstormed thirty eight ways to cook a steak. So far. I expect my mother will have another five to ten by the morning.”

“I’m honestly kind of surprised you agreed to it,” Rey confesses.

He gives her a look. “Why?”

“You don’t—” she furrowed her eyebrows at him. “You don’t like being on camera. Every time Finn tries to pull you onto  _ Rey Makes _ , you go all…” Oh, she doesn’t want to try to find the word here.  _ Awkward  _ is not something she wants to say to him, truthful though it may be.

“We came up with a compromise,” he tells her, just as the elevator dings and the doors slide open. “They’re mostly going to be filming the food. I’ll do some voiceover work.”

He reaches forward with one long arm to hold the elevator door for her. Rey adjusts the bag on her shoulder as she steps forward. She doesn’t expect him to keep pace with her as she makes her way through the lobby and towards the front door, but he does. He shortens his strides right up until they reach the wide double doors, where he moves ahead of her just enough to get the door for her.

“Thank you,” she says as they step into the blistering Chicago wind. “Have a nice night, Ben.”

The smile he gives her is so soft it makes her heart skip a beat. “Goodnight, Rey.”

That look is almost too much for her to handle, so she nods, and turns away, ready for the quick two-block trek to the L.

Later, as she’s watching TV and shoveling spoonfuls of boxed mac’n’cheese into her mouth, she can’t help but let her thoughts drift back to their conversation.

That’s the most she’s ever spoken with Ben off camera. She thinks back to her past six months at the Test Kitchen. Just about every interaction she’s had with him has been on-camera in one way or another. Just the fact that they left at the same time tonight is odd. Nice, to be sure, but odd.

Rey glances down at the noodles in her bowl, thinking. Just a few minutes of talking to him was… _ nice _ . Nice in a way that makes her hope it happens again.

* * *

Rey forgets to check for coconuts. She comes running into the test kitchen with snowflakes still in her hair, and the ache of the cold outside still in her bones. After hanging up her coat and scarf, she grabs her usual apron (the light grey one) from its hook and loops the strap over her head. She’s just wrapping the ties around her waist and making the bow at the front when she hears someone say her name.

“There you are!” Finn says. “Ready for day two?”

Rey is not under any circumstances ready for day two. “Coffee first,” she pleads, and Finn relents with a smile. The whole crew is waiting for her when she finally returns to her workstation, three coconuts pinched between her arm and her stomach and a cup of coffee in her other hand.

“I got coconuts!” she says excitedly, more for the camera than because of any actual excitement she feels. She’s tired and nursing a headache, but she’s here to crack coconuts and make Almond Joy candy bars. “Thank goodness we had some on hand, I really wanted to use fresh coconuts.”

A few moments later, after rummaging around her station for Eye Protection, A Bowl, and a Tool To Break Open the Coconuts, Rey’s ready to go. She gives Finn a thumbs up. “Let’s do this.”

The first coconut cracks open after one or two good  _ thwacks _ . Rey pours the coconut water into the bowl and moves onto the next coconut…

...which is moldy.

“Ew.” Rey crinkles up her nose, and with her foot, pulls open the trash can under the counter, dropping the coconut inside. “That’s a nope.”

The third coconut is just fine. Before she starts to work on getting herself some shaved coconut, Rey takes a moment to fill three short glasses with ice, coconut water, and a bit of lime. She takes one for herself. The other two she’ll give as treats to whichever coworkers walk by her station during the next few minutes.

Said coworkers are Maz, who is absolutely delighted by the gift, and Rose, who gives Rey a little sideways hug of thanks.

Today is looking up a bit after all. Rey likes when she can use leftovers to give her coworkers a treat. So does her audience.

Two coconuts should be plenty, and Rey gets to work grinding them up. The grinder has a suction cup to adhere itself to the counter, along with a hand crank and a spinning mechanism to shave the coconut. It takes about ten seconds for Rey to realize that this part of the episode is gonna  _ suck _ .

She has to push down hard on the coconut to get the grinder to shave off bits of the meat inside, but doing so seems to upset the balance of the tool, and the suction cup doesn’t hold. It’s a wobbly half an hour of cursing and muttering and struggling that they’ll edit down to maybe fifteen seconds of footage, quick cuts of her struggles, and then they’ll move onto the next bit.

...and when she’s done, Rey takes a good look at her results and frowns.

“What’s wrong?” Rose asks. Rey thinks maybe Finn waved her friend over from his place behind the camera. He does things like that sometimes. Usually, Rey doesn’t mind. Whoever he waves over usually has some help to offer.

“I think,” Rey says, scooping some of the coconut bits onto her hand. “That these are too small.”

“Hm,” Rose peers down at Rey’s palm. “You could be right? They’re a little bit too finely ground to get the same texture as the original Almond Joy.”

Rey feels her face fall. She doesn’t want to say this next part aloud, but if she doesn’t, Finn will make her repeat it for the camera later anyway. “I think I may have to work a little bit with some dried, packaged coconut then. These were the last of the fresh ones in the kitchen.”

“What’s the plan?” Finn asks as Rose leaves. She’d been unable to really help, just offer Rey some quick moral support and then dash off to wherever she was going. Probably to make lasagna, or cookies, or bread, or something  _ normal _ .

“I think…” Rey hesitates, playing with the shredded coconut for a few seconds. “I think I’m going to see about making this work, and look into maybe doing some filling tests with it for now.”

First, she decides, she’ll need to dry her current batch of coconut a little. She pops a tray or two in the oven on a very low heat so that they won’t dry out completely, but just enough so that the heat can pull out some of the moisture. She sets a timer so she doesn’t forget about them.

“We don’t want them to lose any of their chewy texture,” Rey explains as she closes the oven door.

“Okay,” she says, spinning around, “Here’s what we’re gonna—oh!”

For the second time in two days, Rey runs right into Ben Solo.

“Woah,” she stammers. She clears her throat and tries again. “Hi.”

A quick step to the right, a quick smile for the camera, and a quick welcoming gesture, and Rey invites Ben into her world.

And this time, to her absolute shock, he enters it willingly. “I heard,” he says, “That you might need this.”

And from the pockets of his apron, he pulls out a coconut. And then a second coconut. He sets them gingerly on her workstation countertop, careful to balance them so they don’t roll away. 

Rey is speechless. “How did you know?”

Ben, who is looking at her and not at the camera, says, “I just had a feeling.”

She wonders, for a brief moment, if someone tipped him off. If Finn texted Leia who sent someone running to the store for coconuts and they decided it would be the best thing for the fans if  _ Ben _ made a second cameo in this episode.

But there’s not time to think about that in any detail, because the proper thing to do is: “Thank you!”

It really  _ is _ important to her that she make her candies with fresh ingredients. She’s supposed to be elevating them, and the best way to do that for Almond Joy is to use fresh coconut. “You’re a  _ lifesaver _ , Ben Solo,” she tells him.

His ears turn pink. “I’m just a guy with a couple of coconuts.”

And then he winces. She almost does too.

_ That’s _ gonna be a meme.

“I probably won’t break these open until tomorrow,” she confesses. “We’re going to do some testing on the filling today.”

“What’s the plan?” Ben asks, and Rey almost goes completely speechless again. He never stays on camera this long and he certainly doesn’t ask questions about what she’s doing.

“I need to figure out some ratios for the filling. Actually…” Why is she about to suggest what she’s about to suggest?

Because she’s good at her job, and she knows what she’s about to do will be fantastic if Ben decides to go along. “Want to take a walk down to the pantry with me while I pull together my ingredients?”

He doesn’t answer verbally, but he shrugs his shoulders as if to say  _ why not _ ?

She notices that as they walk, her camera crew trailing behind her, that Ben purposely keeps his strides short so he doesn’t outpace her. 

In the pantry, Rey grabs two bags of shredded coconut, a bottle of vanilla, a can of sweetened condensed milk, some coconut butter, and at Ben’s suggestion, some cans of coconut cream.

He carries everything back to her workstation for her, and helps her spread it all out.

“Thanks, Ben,” Rey says as she starts to pull out glass bowls and her measuring spoons. “Swing by in a little bit to try some samples?”

He ducks his head in a nod and leaves her to her testing.

After retrieving her ground-up coconut from the oven, Rey spends the rest of the morning (and most of the afternoon), mixing up various batches of coconut filling.

She tests out different amounts of vanilla before deciding not to use any. She tries some of the pre-shredded toasted coconut before tossing it aside as too dry. She fiddles, as always, with details so small Finn gets frustrated because  _ no one else will care, Rey _ .

She’ll care. She always does.

“Try mixing it in with some sweetened coconut,” Ben suggests after Rey makes him try a spoonful of her filling. She’s already warned him it’s too dry, though no one else who has stopped by her station has agreed with her on that. 

It feels like admitting defeat, but Rey scribbles it down in her notebook for an idea to try tomorrow if nothing else is working.

“Okay,” she declares, smacking her palms against her apron for good measure. “Let’s toast some almonds, and then we’re calling today a day.”

One sheet of toasted almonds later, and Finn has called a wrap. So much for finishing up Almond Joy in a day. 

Rey gets to work cleaning up her station and spends the last few hours of the day answering emails and looking over potential ideas for upcoming episodes. There’s also a couple of media requests for interviews with her, which is becoming more and more of a thing since the show has begun taking off. Rey finds that a little uncomfortable. She literally just makes disasters in a kitchen all day. There’s really not much special about her.

She leaves work a little later than normal, and if she’s feeling a little gloomy on her trip home it has everything to do with her not-coconut-y-enough-filling and nothing to do with how she doesn’t get to share an elevator ride with Ben Solo at the end of the day.

* * *

“It’s day three,” Rey tells the camera, all bright smiles and positivity. “And we’re gonna crack open some coconuts!”

She pulls on her safety goggles as she continues: “So Ben brought these yesterday. My savior in an apron, ladies and gentlemen.”

It’s hyperbole, but it’s  _ good _ hyperbole. Rey brings down the back of a meat cleaver onto the center of the coconut with a satisfying  _ thwack _ .

And then spends the next  _ two hours _ trying to separate the meat from the shell in a process so tedious she may as well be reading the fucking phone book out loud to Finn.

Ben stops by at the peak of her frustration. He watches her for a moment—trying to wedge a knife in between the hard shell of the coconut and the white flesh—then firmly says: "Stop."

Rey jerks her head up, her free hand rising to press against her chest. She hadn’t noticed him approaching. “Oh my  _ God _ , Ben. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

He winces. “Sorry. Just—please stop. I’ll be right back.”

And he walks away.

Rey looks at Finn, then at the camera lens, and shrugs. She could use a break anyway. Coffee would be good.

When Ben returns, he pulls out a wooden mallet with a wide black head from behind his back and offers it to her. He does it by holding the tool with both hands, his palms open, like he’s a knight handing her a sword. He doesn’t kneel though. Rey’s a little disappointed about that.

“Try this,” he says. She takes it from him. “You’re the  _ best _ , Ben.”

Today he’s wearing a knit hat, so she can’t see if his ears go pink again. That is also a little disappointing.

As he leaves, Rey gives the camera a grin. “MVP of this episode is Ben. Hands down.” She points her finger at her crew. “One of you should get him one of those little plastic trophies. Or a metal or something. Take a note.”

Rey adjusts her eye protection and brings the mallet down onto the coconut with a  _ bang _ . It promptly begins to crack.

“Okay,” she says. “ _ This _ , I like.”

* * *

Later, Rey presses her cheek to the side of the marble countertop and stares at the three-by-four rows of coconut filling spread out on parchment paper across two baking sheets. She’s sitting bent over on a three legged stool, with most of her upper body draped over the counter as she admires her work. 

“They’re so pretty,” she tells Finn, not lifting her face from the cool surface. She knows he’s probably getting a good shot of her looking longingly at her new creations. “I gave them each two little indents for the almonds to sit in. I used the half of the oval cookie cutter I repurposed—” By repurposed she means: cut in half with pliers she stole from Poe’s station— “to give them their rounded ends.”

“How do they taste?” Finn asks from off camera.

“They turned out to be this really good coconut mixture,” Rey grins. “And the texture is very close to the original, so. I think I nailed it.”

She sighs deeply. It’s the end of a long day and she’s very tired. “They just need chocolate.”

There’s the soft sounds of footfalls behind her, but Rey doesn’t bother to move until she hears her name.

She sits up slowly, turning to see Ben. He’s wearing the same dark wool coat, but this time has a deep red scarf wrapped around his neck and holding a pair of black leather gloves in his left hand. 

He suddenly looks worried. “Did I ruin a take? You looked finished.”

Finn shakes his head. “No, we’re just about wrapped for the night.” He waves at the crew. “Go home everybody.”

They disperse in seconds. Rey pulls a cardboard container of plastic wrap out of a drawer and begins to cover her trays. She’ll have to leave them in the fridge overnight to keep them fresh.

Someone clears their throat behind her.

“Oh,” she spins, and Ben is still there. He steps to the far end of her station, and behind him she can see the darkness of the sky. Looks like a storm may be rolling in.

“I’m sorry,” he says, clearing his throat once more. “I just. I wanted to tell you goodnight.”

“Oh,” Rey says again, softer this time. She’s not sure what to do with that. “Goodnight, Ben.”

He starts to walk away, but before he can get very far, he turns on his heel. “Rey? Do you need a ride home?”

She looks out at the darkening sky. “No, no,” she says quickly, despite the queasiness that creeps into her stomach at the thought of venturing outside. The temperature is sure to be dropping quickly. She thinks they’re expecting quite a few inches of snow tonight. “I’ll be fine. I don’t need a ride.”

One or two blocks, three or four stops, another block, and then she’s home.

“All right.” Ben ducks his head. Then— “Would you like one? I think I’m headed in your direction.”

Rey studies him for a moment. She lifts the trays of coconut filling in her hands just a touch. “Let me put these in the refrigerator,” she says. “And then we can go.”

Ben is one of the few people Rey works with who owns a car and doesn’t rely on public transportation or Uber. She also  _ thinks _ he may live in the suburbs, but isn’t entirely sure. Leia Solo has a house up in Winnetka, but she takes the train in every day. Maybe Ben sometimes does the same?

It’s a nice little black coupe with heated seats that work quickly, which is good because Rey was already shivering from the quick walk through the parking garage. 

When Ben turns the car on, soft strains of classical music begin to play before he pushes a button with his thumb to switch off the radio.

“You could have left it on,” Rey says. “I don’t mind.”

He glances briefly at her before backing out of his parking space. “It’s fine.”

Rey studies her lap. “Thank you for all your help this week,” she says finally. “I meant it when I said I appreciated you.”

She thinks he  _ maybe _ smiles, but it’s a quick thing if it’s there at all. “Anytime.”

More silence. 

Then, because she can’t take it anymore, Rey twists in her seat to face him directly and asks: “Did you really get to cook a steak with a laser?”

Ben  _ laughs _ . It’s a strange sound, half-surprised even as it comes out of his mouth, but he nods as he flicks on his right blinker. “I really got to cook steak with a laser.”

“How’d it taste?”

Ben slows as they approach a red light. “Horrible. I would  _ not  _ recommend it.”

Tension lifted, Rey settles back in her seat for the remainder of the drive. Ben flicks back on the classical music, and she stares out the window as the snow falls.

Even though she’s cold as she climbs the steps to the entryway of her apartment building, Rey stops to turn and wave at Ben with one purple-mittened hand before he drives off into the night.

* * *

“So tell me where we’re at?” Finn asks from off camera.

Rey groans and drops her head onto the counter, using her crossed arms as a pillow. It’s day four, and her suffering is at its peak. "We're tempering chocolate. That should tell you all you need to know."

“Catch us up on the last half hour.”

Another groan. “We finished the filling. It is sufficiently coconut-y. Now I have to temper the chocolate to cover the almonds and the coconut filling.”

“Can you tell us what tempered chocolate is?”

“Tempered chocolate,” Rey begins, for what feels like the millionth time, “—is chocolate that has been heated to a certain temperature and then cooled and then heated again to give it a snap and a shiny texture.”

She lifts her head from its position nestled in her arms. “In the past, I’ve tried using the seed method. You melt chocolate over a double boiler and then add chocolate to it to bring the temperature up and then you melt it down again.”

“Is that the plan this time?”

“No,” she brightens a little, because she  _ does _ have a plan this time and it involves a different method. “The plan this time is to try the  _ sous vide _ method, where we vacuum seal a bag of chocolate and put it in a pot of hot water with an immersion cooker and use that to get to the precise temperature we need to get the chocolate to temper. The problem is that I’ve never done it before.”

Finn almost laughs. “You’ve also never made Almond Joy before.”

She glares at him, but keeps it soft for the camera. “Yeah, well, I vote I don’t have to temper chocolate at all.”

At this point though, Rey knows she’s just burning daylight. It’s mid-morning, and the sooner she starts on this, the sooner she can finish it. She drags out a pot, attaches the  _ sous vide _ to the side, retrieves her dark chocolate, and fills the pot with water—

—and immediately hits a snag when she can’t find vacuum sealer.

Because of the layout of the test kitchen and where her workstation is, she basically spends her days looking at her crew and a wall of refrigerators, plus a little bit of counter with a microwave on it. The wall to Rey’s left is lined with ovens and stovetops, and to her right is a long storage counter in front of floor to ceiling windows looking out at the city.

She always has her back to the rest of the test kitchen; the eight additional stations for her coworkers are always behind her.

Rey spins around. Rose is stirring something on a stove, Poe is chopping something two stations back, facing away from her and—

“Ben!”

When Ben is working at his station, he faces her. (Rey works back to back with Kaydel, who has been out all week.) He looks up from the flour he’s sifting when Rey says his name. “Yes?”

Today his hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Flour dusts the front of his black apron. There’s one large smudge on his face from where he must have wiped it. Rey almost laughs at the look of him. “Do you know where vacuum sealer is?”

He gives her a weird look.

Rey faces him, hands on her hips, nose scrunched up. “Help me look?” she pleads. “I think it might be above the fridge.”

Ben wipes his hands on a towel, and then gestures to her. “Lead the way,” he says.

She doesn’t have to ask him to grab the step ladder, he just does. The industrial refrigerators are  _ tall _ , and the cabinets above them are tricky to reach, even for Ben, who is quite a bit taller than she is. 

“Here,” Rey says as Ben unfolds the ladder and sets it down. “I may have to hand you things.”

Ben’s a really good sport, considering Rey’s crew is busy filming and holding microphones. She digs out two plastic storage boxes filled with assorted cookie cutters and passes them down one-by-one to Ben. There’s an old food processor behind them that may or may not work, as well as what looks like a grinder for coffee beans. No vacuum sealer though. 

Ben passes back up the two bins of cookie cutters. At least Rey will know where to find those the next time she needs them for  _ Rey Makes _ . 

They get all the way through the first three cabinets with no luck. At the fourth, Rey has just moved the step-ladder and climbed up onto the third step when she hears something  _ break.  _

It’s Poe, having knocked a large glass bowl to the floor and then at the same time tipped over a stack of three metal bowls beside it. The glass bowl shattered to pieces. The metal bowls clattered against the floor and rolled away in three different directions.

Rey doesn’t know all this, initially. She just hears the initial crash and whips around to see what’s happened—while she’s still on the stepladder.

“Careful,” Ben says, and suddenly he’s  _ much _ closer and his hands are on her waist. She catches herself by bracing her hands on his shoulders. One of his thumbs moves against her side, right below her ribcage, and it’s startling for her to realize she’s  _ that _ aware of him that her body could key in on such a tiny movement.

But even  _ that _ thought is thrown from her mind the moment her eyes meet his. His pupils are blown wide, and his expression is worried. Something about having all of his attention fixed on her—without him looking away sheepishly or looking at the floor, or at a place right behind her head—steals away her breath.

He’s just  _ intense _ . Rey finds herself searching his face, like she can determine via this exploration the root cause of it. What is it that makes Ben Solo so severe?

“I’m okay,” she hears herself whisper, and the bubble around them breaks. Suddenly she can hear the people cleaning up the shattered glass (and maybe some flour? It looks like the bowl was full when it dropped), and rounding up the metal bowls that made a break for it.

Ben helps her the rest of the way off of the ladder. He’s back to avoiding her gaze. “Let me do this one,” he tells her. He only needs to use the second step to comfortably reach the cabinet.

“Got it!” he says, and a second later he’s handing her down a vacuum sealer and a box of bags.

She’s pretty sure the sigh she breathes is relief. “Thank you,” she says. Seems like she’s always thanking him, though this time she doesn’t know if it’s for breaking her fall or finding the vacuum sealer.

He ducks his head, folding up the ladder and tucking it under one shoulder. “I’ll put this away.”

Rey watches as he starts to walk away. Before he makes it more than a few steps, he turns back to her and says, “You’re welcome.”

It registers then that the cameras are still on her. She hopes they panned from her nearly falling off a ladder to the clean-up happening behind her, but she’s probably not that lucky. 

Rey lifts up the vacuum sealer and tries to give the camera a big grin. She doesn’t feel it though. She feels confused and disoriented, like she was the thing that hit the floor and shattered into pieces.

“Let’s do this!” she says cheerily. “The first batch is for the almonds. The second will be for enrobing.” 

The whole tempering process takes longer than expected. It always does. The first batch of chocolate she melts and cools and heats again does  _ not _ pass the temper test, and she can’t figure out what she did wrong.

Rey gives up and coats the almonds anyway, laying each chocolate covered nut onto its bed of coconut-filling.

She frowns at them, as if it’s  _ their _ fault the chocolate didn’t temper correctly. “Ideally, we’ll cover this all with more chocolate and it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. On to the second batch!”

Very carefully, Rey moves the filling and almonds onto a baking rack so she can pour the tempered chocolate over them and let the excess fall away. She actually has a lot of fun throughout the entire process of enrobing the candies, enjoying her banter back and forth with Finn. This feels comfortable, controlled. Rey likes feeling in control.

Which is probably why her near-fall earlier threw her so much, and why she was so flustered by Ben catching her. (She can still, if she thinks about it, recall the sensation of his thumb rubbing against her skin.)

After letting the candies sit in the walk-in fridge for about half an hour, Rey pulls them out again, tempers more chocolate, coats their underside, sends them back in the walk-in, and eats a very late lunch of canned chicken noodle soup and Ritz crackers. 

Half an hour after  _ that _ , Rey holds an original almond joy in her left hand and her version in her right. She positions them so the camera can get a good look at the differences.

“Mine looks a lot darker because we decided to go with darker chocolate,” Rey explains, as she cuts into each candy crosswise and holds them up again for another comparison shot. She stays still for a good ten to fifteen seconds, so they can use the long shot in the video when it gets uploaded next week.

“Overall, though I think they look good! I got a good snap when I broke one of mine apart, just like the original Almond Joy.” Rey takes a bite. “It’s just a good combination of flavors, the chocolate, the nut, and the coconut together and I think I nailed the right ratio of each.”

Rey’s never really been sure how Finn coordinates it so everybody stops by her station to try her treats at the end of an episode, but he must send out some kind of message. As soon as she announces she’s done and starts to do a breakdown of her work, her coworkers start showing up in ones and twos.

“I’m really impressed that you have chocolate surrounding the almond,” Rose says when she stops by to try one. “That’s really impressive, Rey. These are  _ delicious _ .”

“Man, chocolate tempering,” Poe says, two bites in. “But also this turned out  _ so good _ . And the coconut is just…” he holds up his hand, pressing pointer and thumb together but spreading the other three fingers out wide. “Bam. Mm. Amazing.”

Even Leia stops by her station. “You really brought out the almond flavor too, Rey. I can tell you used very fresh ingredients.” She holds up the chocolate in her hand and looks right at the camera when she says, “This is a  _ joy _ . Just like Rey.”

Warmth starts in Rey’s chest and spreads through her body like warm butter over bread. 

The only person who does not show up is Ben. Rey lingers just a bit, but eventually it’s time to film her closing. She talks briefly about how much fun she’s had, how she felt like she really challenged herself on this episode, and closes with: “And I think I figured out a good way to temper chocolate. So many  _ wins _ this episode of Rey Makes.”

“Alright,” Finn says. “Give me a couple takes of ‘Here’s how to make Rey’s Almond Joy...’?”

Rey grins, spreading out her arms so they make a triangle with the counter for the camera. She just touches her fingertips to the surface. “Here’s how to make Rey’s Almond Joy.”

She clears her throat and changes the inflection: “Here’s now to make Rey’s Almond Joy.”

And again: “Here’s how to make Rey’s Almond Joy.”

“Cut,” Finn says. “That’s a wrap on Almond—”

And then he stops, looking at something behind Rey. Some _ one _ behind Rey. Rey turns and—

“Ben.” She holds out a chocolate on a napkin. “Would you like to try one?”

“You were wrapping,” he says softly, “I don’t need to—”

Finn waves him off. “Don’t worry about it. We have a few more minutes.”

“Here,” Rey says, and this time he takes the Almond Joy from her. She’s pretty much used to how Ben examines food by now, so she’s not surprised when he spends a few moments studying the bar before eating it. He snaps it in half, nods, sniffs at the coconut, nods again, and finally takes a bite.

For a moment, his expression is completely unreadable. Rey feels her stomach knotting up. She’s done with this episode, and everyone else has liked it, but what if she  _ did _ screw something up? What if she forgot something or made a mistake or the specific bar she handed Ben had something disastrous happen to it without her knowledge?

Ben swallows, and then he smiles. It’s a full smile too, it reaches up to his eyes and crinkles the skin at his temples. “Rey,” he says softly, “This is delightful. Better than the original. You’ve done some great work here.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to do half of it without your help,” she deflects.

Ben shakes his head. “Untrue. I didn’t even do that much.”

“Either way,” she says, “You have my thanks, Ben.”

“I think that’s a wrap,” Finn says, and Rey nearly jumps because she’d forgotten he was even there, that she was even on camera. That happens sometimes, but usually when she’s busy baking or decorating. It’s easy to get lost in her work and forget about the camera. But when she’s closing an episode? When she’s chatting with coworkers about the end result?

Rey doesn’t usually forget about the cameras. Or about other people in the room. What is  _ wrong _ with her?

She’s tired, she thinks. It’s been a long week; it’s Friday evening, and she needs to go home and take a nap. She’ll have more normal test kitchen responsibilities on Monday, and then be back to Rey Makes on Tuesday. She needs a weekend.

The crew start to pack things up, and Ben finishes his Almond Joy.

“Did you film today?” Rey asks Ben as she wraps up her leftovers. She’ll pass them around the office before she leaves for the day.

“Chicken Fried Steak, Boiled Steak, Steamed Steak—” Here Rey makes a face—“Oven, and Broiled.”

“How gross was the boiled steak?”

He frowns. “Pretty bad, but probably not as bad as the steak I’m cooking in an Easy Bake Oven on Monday.”

“Why an Easy Bake Oven?”

“Curiosity, I think,” Ben answers. “Wouldn’t  _ you  _ like to see someone try to cook a steak in an Easy Bake Oven?”

She shrugs. “Wouldn’t  _ you  _ like to see someone take four days to try to perfect an Almond Joy?”

“I think I just did,” he answers with a smile. It’s not as big, doesn’t quite light up his face the same way, but it’s still nice. Still warm.

“I’ll have to sneak away to enjoy your suffering next week,” Rey says, mentally running through her schedule to try and figure out when she’ll be able to do so. Maybe she’ll end up working on something that involves a lot of sitting back and waiting. Those usually give her some free time.

“Walk out with me?” Ben asks. 

Rey nods, but lifts the tray in her hands ever so slightly. “Let me put this away.”

They meet at the elevators. Ben is tucked up in his usual wool jacket and black leather gloves. Rey’s wearing a matching knit cap, scarf, and gloves. She kind of likes this new friendship with Ben. She’s a little nervous she’ll spoil it.

“What’s next week?” Ben asks as he thumbs the down button on the elevator.

Rey makes a face. “Who knows? I mean, they usually give me some idea of what we’re looking at, but I won’t actually  _ know _ until I walk in Monday morning.”

The elevator doors slide open, and Rey follows Ben inside. She glances up at him. He’s not so tall that she has to crane her neck or anything, but just tall enough that she does have to tip her chin just a little. “That way I can’t spend the weekend planning. Have to just go wherever the snack food takes me.”

“What if it takes you to more tempered chocolate?”

“Then I temper more chocolate.” Rey punctuates the declaration with a raised fist. “Already done it once. I can do it again. Have chocolate; will temper.”

She thinks she almost gets a smile this time. She probably shouldn’t have  _ make Ben smile _ on her list of goals right next to  _ make gourmet Almond Joy _ and  _ successfully temper chocolate _ but that’s her life right now. 

Temper chocolate. Make Ben smile.

As life goals go, they’re not terrible.

The elevator doors open in the lobby, and just like before, Ben holds them for Rey. 

“You bring such creativity to this,” he tells her as they walk together to the front doors. “Not sure how you make it work.”

“Most days,” Rey says, “I’m not sure either.” 

She’s a little disappointed when their quick walk from the elevators to the front doors is over and she’s faced with the bracing cold of the Chicago wind. 

“See you Monday.” Rey hunches her shoulders a little as if that will stave off the cold and wind.

“See you on Monday,” Ben replies, and she thinks maybe he keeps watching her as she turns and starts to walk away. 

“Rey!” Ben calls out suddenly, and Rey spins to look at him. He continues, “I’m meeting a few friends for drinks tonight. The bar is only a few blocks away.” 

The wind is coming from behind her, and it tries to whip stray strands of her hair into her eyes. She makes a  _ pffbt _ sound as she blows hair out of her mouth. 

She feels like the wind could carry her away, knock her over, when Ben holds out a gloved hand. “Would you like to join me?”

She would, is the crazy thing. She’d like to join Ben and his friends for a drink. She’d like to not be alone in her apartment, eating ramen and feeling suffocated and oppressed by her own loneliness. 

With a smile and a warm feeling that something new is about to start, Rey takes Ben’s hand, and side-by-side they walk into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay first: [Watch Claire Saffitz from the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen Make Gourmet Almond Joy."](https://youtu.be/BSWsCQ5bGvo)  
> [And watch Amiel show you every way to cook a steak.](https://youtu.be/Jpd_CUX2o98)
> 
> Also, I have no update schedule, three chapters is a guess, and the rating is subject to change. Happy Reylo Week, kiddos! Come say hi to me on [tumblr.](http://andyouweremine.tumblr.com)


	2. starburst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hi, everyone! I’m Rey, we’re in the test kitchen, and today, we’re making gourmet… Starburst!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How do I love  OhEmGeeItsColey? Let me count the ways. I love her for all the times she yells at me about these two. I love her for all the times she pats me (metaphorically) on the hand and tells me that my writing does not suck. I love her for all the times she sends me Reylo fanart cause I'm sad. And I love her for all the times she yells at me about Soft Ben Solo baking with Rey. She's an unstoppable force inspiring me to write, and I love her. 
> 
> Huge thanks also to [ StoriesOfImagination](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoriesOfImagination) for her cheerleading and handholding this chapter. I am sorry I did not warn you to have Almond Joy on hand last time. Never again. Promise.

* * *

_starburst._

* * *

“Hi, everyone! I’m Rey, we’re in the test kitchen, and today we’re making gourmet… Starburst!”

The pile of starburst in front of her is _massive._ There’s a huge bowl of the wrapped candies and at least ten other various sized packages spread out across her workstation. Rey has to stand on a box in order for her head to peak out from behind the mountain of candy. 

She can’t help how she giggles when she almost falls off the wooden crate as she tries to get down. She tries not to think about how Ben isn’t there to catch her this time.

“So I actually haven’t had Starburst in a really long time,” Rey confesses. “I don’t really seek them out as a candy, but I’ll eat them if they’re _there_.”

Rey tears open a sleeve a little too aggressively and the individually wrapped Starburst scatter across the counter. She can’t help but laugh. She gathers the starburst back up together, having to dive a bit across her workstation in order to get all of them. The marble is cool against her skin.

“Lets try this again,” she says, unfolding the wax paper wrapping from one of the pink starburst. “If I remember right, pink is my favorite.”

“What flavor is that?” Finn asks.

“Strawberry.” Rey pops the candy in her mouth, and tips her head to the side to read one of the packages. She shoves the starburst into her left cheek with her tongue. “I think.” 

It takes an inordinate amount of time for Rey to finish the Starburst and feel able to talk again. “Okay, the original flavors are cherry, orange, strawberry, and lemon.” Rey counts off each flavor on her fingers. “Do I have to do all four?” she asks Finn, scrunching up her nose.

“I think you do,” Rose says when she stops by a few minutes later. “I mean, that’s what Starburst _are_. You have to capture their essence, Rey.”

“This one is just the worst,” Rey tells Rose, staring at a lone orange Starburst in the center of her palm. “I don’t really see how to make starburst _gourmet_. It’s fruit flavored taffy. They use real fruit. There are not that many ways to make gourmet taffy. ”

“I don’t like these,” Maz says, pulling the orange starburst out of her mouth with two fingers and dropping it in Rey’s open trash can. “They’re just… not good.”

She takes a few steps away, before turning around, pointing to the trash can and mouthing _not good_ for the sake of the camera. Rey hides her giggle behind one hand and exchanges a look with Finn.

“Hi,” Ben says, and Rey whips her head around so fast her ponytail swishes around and hits her face.

Rey tries not to acknowledge the spike of joy that surges through her. “Hi,” she says back, her voice soft. Why is her voice so quiet? Why is she not being perky and happy like normal.

She quirks her head to the side in invitation. Reaching behind him, Ben grabs a wood stool with one hand and swings it around to place it in front of him. He sits.

It’s strange, looking _down_ at him. Rey’s not really used to that. She holds out a sleeve of Starburst.

“Have you considered—” Ben asks, tossing aside a pink starburst, then a red and orange— “that yellow is actually the best flavor?”

Rey blinks at him. “I have not.”

He passes her the yellow candy before skipping past the next three starburst in the sleeve in order to find another lemon-flavored one. Rey unwraps it and takes a bite of the corner. She hums. He’s not _wrong_ . The lemon _is_ better than the strawberry. It’s still a Starburst, with all it’s starburst-y hard texture followed by a slow give.

She stares at Ben, squinting a little at him. When she speaks, she waggles the 3/4ths of a starburst still pinched in her fingers at him. “It’s not fair that you’re right.”

He frowns at her. “How is that not fair?”

She doesn’t really have an answer for that, so she pops the rest of the taffy into her mouth.

Ben narrows his eyes at her. “Uh-huh,” he says. 

She can’t answer because she’s still chewing.

“I don’t know how you’ll manage these,” Ben says dryly. “The flavors are so complex. The sweetness, the lemon, the texture.”

Rey gives his shoulder a little shove. “Be serious,” she says around her Starburst.

He sighs. “You need to strike the right balance with the texture. It can’t dissolve right away, but it also can’t be too chewy.”

She scrunches up her nose. “I just already don’t like this one. I don’t think it’s going to be hard, just pointless.”

“Nothing is pointless,” Ben says sagely. 

Rey quirks an eyebrow. “Starburst are.”

He tilts his head slightly. “When you finish this, I’m going to ask you what you’ve learned from the experience, and you’ll have a whole long story to tell me.”

“Doubtful.” Rey tugs open a drawer and pulls out a ruler. “I think the only part of this I’m looking forward to is making little wax wrappers for my Starburst.”

“That’s still not nothing,” Ben points out. She finds herself a little disappointed that he’s standing up, putting the stool he was sitting on away.

She tries not to think too hard about that.

A second later, she looks up in surprise from the Starburst she’s measuring to see Ben loading up his arms with the bags of Starburst all over her workstation. She glances at Finn, trying to communicate the question of _Aren’t you going to stop him?_ , but Finn just shrugs.

“Ben,” Rey says slowly.

“What?” he asks, dutifully dropping an armful of Starburst on the counter against the window and coming back for a second trip.

“You don’t have to,” she says softly, but her mic probably catches it anyway.

His cheeks go just a little pink, and he lifts his hand to rub the back of his neck. He looks at her for a charged moment and then starts picking up more starburst.

Rey sets down the starburst in her hand and the ruler, and grabs the giant plastic bowl of Starburst in one arm and a huge bag of gummy (gummy!) Starburst with her other hand in order to finish the job.

Ben stands quietly at the window counter while she deposits the last of the candy in the massive pile.

“Thanks,” she says, turning to look at him. The motion puts her back to the camera, but she almost doesn’t care. Why is she _always_ thanking him?

Why is he always helping her?

“Anytime,” Ben says. 

Rey raises her hand to offer a high five, and Ben presses his palm to hers in the most gentle of high-fives that has ever existed or ever will exist.

“Woah,” Rey says. “No, no, no, no, do that again.”

He looks first at her, then the camera. “C’mon,” Rey says, holding up her right palm. “With a little bit of a snap to it this time, Ben.”

He tries again, and this time there is a little bit of a satisfying _clap_ as their hands meet. Rey studies him thoughtfully. “Better. Try again. You’re not going to hurt me.”

The third time her hand stings just the tiniest bit, and the _smack_ of their hands clapping together is a nice, loud sound. Rey grins, even as Ben looks a little concerned. “That one was good.”

Amused, Ben asks, “That’s the proper way to high five?”

She gives him a one-shoulder shrug. “Okay, this time bring your arm all the way down, so we high five twice, once up top and once below.”

He seems confused until she demonstrates, swinging her arm down in a half circle. “Like this.” 

They high five again, and this time they both manage to get both the top high five and the bottom high five.

“Then what you can do,” Rey explains, “Is switch hands and do it again.”

Another attempt. This time Ben misses the first high five after the hand switch. Rey laughs. “One more time.”

One more time later, and they’ve got it. A four-part high five. Two up high, two down low.

“We’ll keep working on this,” Rey says. “We’ll get a personalized high-five, Ben, just you wait.”

His reaction is one of complete skepticism, but Rey appreciates the honesty in it.

“Now,” she says, lifting her ruler in one hand and holding out a pink Starburst to the camera with the other. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

“You wanna catch us up to speed?”

“Sure,” Rey says. It’s way-too-early-o-clock in the morning on Wednesday, she has a full cup of coffee and a not-insignificant amount of optimism. “Spent the rest of yesterday researching taffy recipes, but didn’t have a chance to actually do much testing. Finn probably cut that down to a montage for you.”

Finn shrugs. “Probable,” he says.

“The plan for today,” Rey continues, “Is to just make the basic taffy mix and get that consistency right. The flavoring can happen tomorrow.”

“So what’s the plan for the taffy?”

Rey holds up a saucepan. “Cook together corn starch, sugar, water, coconut oil, corn syrup, and a pinch of salt. Then we mix in some gelatin, and see what we have to work with!”

What Rey has to work with, after that, is a concoction of un-pulled taffy, and she sets to work tentatively using a plastic scraper to fold it in on itself over and over until it’s cool enough to touch with her fingers. Then, she spritzes her hands with oil and begins to pull the taffy, stretching it out wide and folding it in on itself over and over again to incorporate air into it.

After about three stretches her arms start to burn. “Wow,” she says, trying to smile through the aches in her arm muscles. “This is kind of a _workout_.”

She loops the taffy around again and does another pull, grimacing a little. “There _has_ to be a better way to do this. I wonder if I could make one of those mechanical arms that pulls taffy?”

Another stretch, then she winds the taffy together and goes again, and again.

“You getting bored yet?” she teases Finn.

“Maybe a little,” he replies.

“Imagine how I feel,” she says, making a face at him as she pulls out the taffy again.

Some time later, Rey declares the taffy as good as it’s going to get. She drops it into a wax paper lined bread pan and covers it with a baking sheet. It’ll need to sit for an hour, so the crew breaks for lunch.

Rey takes a few moments to tidy up her station and scrub the leftover sticky taffy off of her hands. She dries her hands off with a towel, and decides to make a pit stop at Ben’s station before going to collect her lunch from the employee fridge.

“Hey,” he says as she approaches. “You’re missing your entourage.”

“They took lunch,” she offers by way of explanation. “I thought I’d stop by. Say hi.”

Ben is currently in the middle of kneading a ball of dough. “Hi,” he says, pressing down with the heel of his hand. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and he’s got a light dusting of flour up his arms.

“What are you doing?” Ray asks, leaning backwards against the edge of Ben’s workstation.

“Making bread,” he says, as if it’s obvious. It sort of is, but Rey realizes she wasn’t so much asking what he was doing as much as she was asking _why_ he was doing it.

“But why?” she clarifies.

He glances over at her, but keeps kneading. “I’m finalizing a pasta recipe and we’re going to use pull-apart-garlic-bread for the side.”

She swears her mouth starts to water. Garlic bread is her weakness.

Ben motions to a tray of ingredients by tilting his chin. “You wanna chop up some parsley and oregano for me?”

Rey tugs over his cutting board and the knife Ben’s already laid out. He keeps kneading while she rinses the leaves and then finely chops them. “How much do you need?” she asks.

“About two tablespoons of the oregano, and a quarter cup of the parsley,” Ben answers. “Mixed in with four cloves of garlic and a stick of butter.”

Rey uses the back of her knife to scrape the oregano into a tiny glass bowl, then goes for the parsley. She could be getting started on her lunch, but something about helping Ben is soothing. She doesn’t need to try to figure out what’s working or what’s not or how to make a Starburst.

She minces the garlic next and sets it aside. Following Ben’s instructions is easy. She knows that butter and garlic and oregano and parsley will taste good together on bread. It’s so much easier than corn syrup and sugar and gelatin and _taffy_.

When Rey comes back to Ben’s station with a bowl filled with eight tablespoons of melted butter, he’s in the process of cutting the dough into one-inch pieces. Rey stirs in the oregano, parsley, and garlic. Ben passes her a bread pan, and in tandem, they go back and forth dipping the bits of dough into the butter and herbs in companionable silence.

Rey tries not to think about how their fingers accidentally brush twice as they reach into the bowl at the same time. She doubts he notices

She’s long felt the saddest thing about baking bread is the time it takes to rise. She’s a little disappointed when they have to cover both loaf pans with towels and set them aside to rest.

“I guess I should…” She waves her hand around aimlessly. “I should…eat. Lunch. I should eat lunch. While we’re still on a break.”

As if on cue, the timer clipped to Ben’s apron begins to chirp. He puts a hand on her arm. 

“Wait one minute,” he says.

She does. Ben goes over to the ovens and pulls out a casserole dish topped with bubbling cheeses and smelling _divine_. He carries it over to his work station and sets the lasagna on top of two trivets. “It’s a test batch,” he explains. “Want to try it with me?”

It’s not quite garlic bread, but one of the perks of working where she does means _lots_ of free food for the purposes of research. Off her nod, Ben plates two servings of the lasagna. He sprinkles fresh parmesan and pepper onto each before handing Rey a bowl and a fork.

Rey has to blow on it to cool it down, but when she finally takes a bite she nearly dies and goes to heaven. Those are the actual words she tells Ben, who gives her a puzzled look.

Sometimes, Rey gets a little caught up in the hyperbole her job requires. Little things she says tend to spin out of proportion. She’s quirky and loud for the camera when she needs to be, and she needs to be quirky and loud for the camera a lot. It’s a bit hard to switch it off sometimes.

She swallows another bite and tones down her reaction this time. “I like the flavor profile,” she tells Ben. “Good combination of spices here, and a nice balance between the amount of noodles and sauce and meat and cheese. Makes everything feel like it’s got a good texture.”

This time, she gets a genuine smile. “I don’t think I’m going to tweak anything when I make it for the camera later.” He frowns at the casserole dish. “Maybe go a little lighter on the mozzarella on the top—”

Rey makes a stabbing motion with her fork. “Don’t you _dare_. Look at this!” She digs into the lasagna again with the teeth of her fork, and lifts the utensil a good foot above the bowl to show him the long string of cheese hanging between the lasagna and her fork. “Look at this cheese pull, Ben! The people deserve a lasagna with this cheese pull. It’s epic.”

And he laughs. It comes from somewhere deep in his stomach, and Rey’s own flutters just a touch at the sound. “Fine,” he tells her. “I will keep the cheese pull. Just for you.”

“Not just for _me_ , Ben,” she protests. “For the _people_.”

A sigh. “For you _and_ the people. But mostly for you.”

Rey takes another gigantic bite, satisfied. This is _so much_ better than the pizza lunchable in the fridge that she’s not admitting to actually being hers.

* * *

Rey’s not thrilled by the taffy when she comes back to it later.

“Tell us what you don’t like,” Finn prompts off-camera. 

Rey levels him with a steely gaze. “Well for one thing—” She lifts up a square piece of white taffy and pulls it apart. The taffy stretches between her fingers, soft and gooey. “Starburst aren’t supposed to do this. Starburst don’t have this pull. They just sort of break apart.”

She takes a bite of the taffy, rolling it around on her tongue critically. “So it’s a little like a marshmallow, if that makes sense? It’s a little bit chewy, but it’s mostly sticky.”

Rey stares down at the white fluff and sighs. “We’re gonna have to try again.”

“What are you going to do differently?” asks Rose, who has stopped by and been given a piece to try.

“I’ve been giving that some thought,” Rey says. She’s playing with a bit of taffy in her hands, pulling it and folding it back together. “I think I’m gonna try it again with an extra tablespoon of cornstarch and then just cooking it hotter overall. The hope is that gives me the firmer texture that I want.”

“Are you gonna flavor this batch?” Rose asks.

Rey wrinkles her nose. “I haven’t even _thought_ about flavoring yet.”

Rose pats her shoulder. “Well don’t worry about it too much. Just worry about the taffy part for now.”

This time, when she gets to the point where she should stretch the taffy, she makes exactly one pull and winces. Nope. No, no, not doing that again. She glances around, looking for an idea, and spies one when her eyes land on her bright blue kitchen-aid.

“Poe!” she calls out, spying him first. “Can you find me a dough-hook for my mixer?”

Poe’s in a white t-shirt covered up with a grey and white striped apron. “Sure,” he says, “one sec.”

Rey keeps pulling the taffy as she waits for Poe to affix the dough hook. “Can you spray it with some Pam?”

Poe sprays it down, steps back, and crosses his arms, watching. Rey narrates a bit for the camera. “So my theory is that I can loop this around the hook…” She tries, successfully, and pulls out the taffy in a long stretch before looping it again. It clings to what feels like every piece of skin on her hands, but this is so much easier than doing it 100% by hand.

“I feel like this is much firmer than last time,” Rey says, as she pulls it off of the hook and works to press it into another loaf pan. Once that’s done, she takes a frustrating five minutes to clean it off of her hands. “We’re going to cover this and set it aside, and while that’s resting, I’m going to start working on the flavors.” She frowns at the camera. “Thanks to Rose for the reminder.”

Rey hits a stroke of luck when she finds all the flavors she’s looking for in a plastic bin of various extracts. Poking through all the little bottles yields strawberry, lemon, cherry, and, finally, orange.

“Okay,” Rey says happily, setting the four bottles aside. “That’s _that_ problem taken care of. Let’s look at some food coloring.”

“Doesn’t it say _real fruit juice_?” Poe asks. He’s been listening in ever since he spent fifteen minutes watching her use her dough-hook and Kitchen-Aid to stretch taffy.

Rey whirls around, mouth agape. “Poe!” she wails. “I did _not_ need that reminder. Bad timing!”

His grin tells her he knows _exactly_ what he’s just done.

Rey turns back to Finn and the camera he’s wielding. “Okay. We’ve found some flavors, let’s take a look at what kinds of juice we have here in the Test Kitchen that we can use for some coloring and flavor. I’m still holding onto the extract, though.”

“Why don’t you make the juice?” Poe asks. “I’ve got some lemons you can use.”

Rey whirls and mouths, _shut up_ at him.

“Yeah,” Rose says. “I’ve got fresh strawberries left over from a recipe today.”

Rey gives her friend a look of utter betrayal. 

“I’ll help,” Rose quickly adds. “It’ll be fun.”

And with that, Rey relents. Rose hangs out with her for the rest of the afternoon, cooking down and straining the strawberries and cherries, and then juicing the oranges and lemons.

“So Ben’s been over here quite a bit,” Rose surprises her with while they stand over the stove, Rey stirring a saucepan of strawberries while Rose stirs the cherries.

Rey gives the camera a side eye, then purposefully turns her back to it. She lifts her pointer finger to her neck and makes a slashing motion.

Rose rolls her eyes and tips her head to look past Rey. “Finn? Can you cut the mics?”

He thinks for a second, but then nods. “I’m guessing we’re gonna do some quick cuts here anyway.”

Rey takes the moment to give the kitchen a quick glance-over. Thankfully, it confirms that there is no Ben to be seen.

“So,” Rose says slowly. “Ben Solo.”

“Rose,” Rey says through clenched teeth. “Even with the microphones off now is still not the time.”

“I’m just saying.” Rose is focusing very intently on her cherries. “He doesn’t stop by my station to walk me out of the building at night.”

Rey’s cheeks grow hot. She hopes it’s just the heat from the stove. She wonders if it really is. “That only happened once. And he’s just being nice.”

“Nice, huh?” Rose says noncommittally. “If you say so.”

They’re left with four Pyrex two-cup glass measuring cups of juice. Rey mixes in the extract to give the flavor a little extra kick, and then stirs in a half-teaspoon of citric acid for good measure.

She pulls out her second test batch of taffy, pokes it with her forefinger, and frowns. “Well that didn’t firm up as much as I wanted it to. Maybe I need to compare it to the first batch.”

The first batch is firmer than the second batch. Rey almost laughs. “Okay, note to self: this stuff takes a _while_ to set. This first batch is a good texture. I’m interested to see what this second batch will be like tomorrow.”

She cracks her knuckles. “For now, lets do a test batch with some flavors and then leave it overnight, shall we?”

The cherry taffy turns out super dark. Rey’s arms still hurt, so she goes back to using the dough hook, this time with the bright idea to switch the mixer onto the lowest speed.

It is _not_ a good idea.

It is a terrible idea.

A terrible, terrible idea.

First, it’s really really difficult to actually loop the taffy over the hook while it’s spinning, even sort of slowly. Second, when she _does_ get the hook to catch on the taffy, the pulling doesn’t work so well. It just sort of twists around the hook itself while Rey tugs at it, and trying to loop it back onto itself is difficult, if not impossible.

Third, when Rey _does_ try to fold over the taffy for another pull, it ends up getting caught on the mixer, on the mechanism holding the hook to the machine. And then while trying to get it free, Rey knocks the whole machine to the ground.

She yelps. The hook is still spinning. Rey has half the taffy stuck to her hands and arms. The rest is wrapped around the still-spinning hook.

Rey stares at it, then takes a step forward to turn it off when it suddenly stops.

She’s suddenly aware of an arm reaching around her from behind, and she whirls around to find—

Ben, mixer cord in one hand, standing just a few inches behind her.

“Oh,” she says. “Hi.”

One side of his mouth quirks up. “Having fun.”

She stares up at him, sticky taffy all over her hands. This current batch is a disaster. It’s late and she’s tired, and her arms hurt and taffy is _exhausting._

So she says, honestly: “Not remotely.”

He tips his head a little, still not breaking her gaze. “I brought you garlic bread. Wash your hands.”

Rey scoots around him to the sink and nearly scrubs her skin raw trying to get all the sticky off. When she finally turns her attention back to Ben, she realizes that her Kitchen-Aid is back on the counter, and he’s at the sink at his own station, muttering curses as he scrubs taffy off of her dough-hook. 

He returns to her with the hook in one and a plate full of fragrant garlic bread in the other. Rey’s mouth waters as he passes her the plate, then he gingerly sets the dough hook down beside her mixer. “I saved what I could,” he tells her, gesturing to a tiny bit of taffy spread out on wax paper. “It was in pretty rough shape.

Rey tears off a piece of bread and pops it into her mouth. It’s _so_ good. She thinks she could happily only eat garlic bread for the rest of her life if Ben makes it for her. “This turned out _amazing_ ,” she tells him, around a full mouth. The bread is hot and buttery and so, _so_ good.

“This?” she points to the plate of half-eaten bread. “This has been the _best_ part of my day.”

And then to her complete and total shock, Ben raises his hand. An offer. A high five.

Rey smacks it with her own palm, then drops her hand to hit his again as he swings it around. “Nice,” she says, barely able to hold in her smile.

A thought suddenly grips her, and she turns to Finn. “Have we wrapped?”

They have not. “Can we wrap now?” she asks. “I’m just going to eat my bread and then go home.”

Finn sighs, but he does in fact let them wrap for the day. “We’re keeping the high-five though,” he tells Ben, who just glares.

“For someone who hates cameras,” Rey tells Ben carefully, “You sure do keep showing up in front of mine.”

“You needed saving,” he says without a speck of hesitation.

“Yes,” she says dryly, “my life was clearly threatened by the Kitchen-Aid robot uprising.”

She feels a little bit bad as soon as she says it. He did save her. Sort of. Again.

Even if she didn’t need it.

So she places a hand on his arm. “Thank you, Ben. It’s sort of been a week, you know?”

“Starburst kicking your ass, huh?”

She rolls her eyes over another mouthful of bread. “The ratios aren’t working. I can’t get the consistency right.”

“You’ll get it,” Ben says with soft reassurance. “You always do.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.” Rey stuffs another bite of garlic bread into her mouth. 

“You’ll ruin your dinner,” Ben says.

She thinks it’s kind of bold of him to assume that her dinner is worth ruining, but she doesn’t say that out loud. “I can live with that.”

Ben jerks his chin. “C’mon,” he says. “Get your coat. I’ll walk you out.”

* * *

Thursday is _rough_. Rey’s goal for the day is to figure out the right ratios of ingredients in order to get the right texture for her Starbursts. She fiddles with the amount of cornstarch, the temperature, and removing the gelatin.

Nothing works. She does accidentally make some fruity hard candy with the gelatin-less batch, but not taffy.

“Where are we?” Finn asks.

Rey holds up a handful of thin orange squares. “I did a test where I left out the gelatin and accidentally made orange-flavored hard candy? It’s really tasty. So, uh, the _flavor_ is good. We’re just still struggling with the texture.”

“Let me get a better shot of those,” Finn says, and Rey obligingly holds out her hands so he can get an overhead shot. Once that’s done, Finn’s back to business. “So what’s the next text.”

A little sadly, Rey sets the orange candies down on a plate. “Well, we’ve concluded that we do actually need gelatin to make this work. Maybe I can up the corn starch? That could help. I’m running out of ideas. I feel like I’ve tried everything.”

“But you’re not feeling defeated?”

Rey wrinkles her nose at him. “I’m _trying_ to attack this problem with confidence and optimism, Finn.”

She adds more corn starch. The candy is hard as a rock.

Rey sits, elbows against the counter, fingers on her temples, and stares at her creation. 

“What now?” Finn asks for like the tenth time. 

She’s running out of ideas. She keeps the cornstarch the same, but increases the gelatin and fat.

It’s still too hard. Rey cuts it into squares with a sharp knife, but even then it doesn’t cut so much as it breaks or snaps. Ben comes over after she curses _loudly_ when one of the pieces goes skittering across the table and falls to the floor.

“You okay?” he asks. He looks down at the imposter starburst. “Did you do it?”

“Try one,” Rey says, offering him a piece. Ben puts it in his mouth cautiously, as if it’s going to break his teeth. It’s so hard it just might.

Ben frowns. “I think I’m supposed to be able to chew these, Rey.”

She gives him a weary look. “I know. I still can’t get the texture right.”

“The flavor is good,” Ben says. It feels like a consolation prize, but Rey doesn’t really want to be consoled.

“The texture is bad,” she tells him, “I _know_.”

“It’s fixable, though.”

She gives him a hard look. “I’m on test number… I think I may have lost count.” She glances at Finn, who shrugs.

“I’d have to look it up,” he says.

Rey has a feeling that if this makes it into the episode, there will be some text on the screen letting the audience know what test it actually is. 

“Tomorrow’s it,” Rey says, taking a long piece of her latest disaster and tapping it against the counter top. “Last chance to make something that’s not solid rock.”

He doesn’t answer, just kind of smiles at her.

“Distract me,” Rey says. “What did you do all day?”

“I drank potato juice,” Ben says with an entirely straight face.

She blinks at him in disbelief. “You _what_?”

“I drank potato juice.” There’s no change in his tone or inflection. It’s like she backed him up ten seconds and he said his line again.

Rey stares for a moment. Then, “Let me guess, this week is Every Way To Cook A Potato?”

There’s a tiny, satisfied smile on his lips. “You would be correct.”

Shaking her head, Rey turns to the camera. “Why do y’all do this to him? Juicing isn’t even technically ‘cooking’.”

“It’s a method of preparation,” Ben says. “And I already baked, fried, grilled, and boiled.”

“Well,” Rey says, looking down at her disastrous Starburst attempt. “I feel like my day was less awful than drinking potato juice had to be. What on _earth_ are you doing tomorrow?”

“Chips, homefries, hash browns, dishwasher, waffle iron…” he shrugs. “I forget the rest.”

“They should pay you more,” Rey says, even though she’s pretty sure he gets paid as much if not more than she does, and she gets paid very well for someone who uses a stupid amount of test kitchen ingredients in order to Not Make Starburst for an entire day.

He chuckles. “Should I bring you some juiced potato, Rey?”

She wrinkles her nose. “No, thank you.”

Ben glances over at her film crew. “She done for the day?”

Finn shakes his head, amused. “Yeah, just let me get a quick plan for tomorrow.”

“I’m going to come over here and help her pull taffy in the morning, and she’s going to do just fine,” Ben says, eyes locked on the camera. “How’s that?”

Finn _laughs_. “Sounds good to me.”

“You don’t have to,” Rey says, as they ride the elevator downstairs. “Help me tomorrow,” she fills in, off of his look. “I’ll figure it out. I always do.”

“It beats drinking potato juice,” Ben says. “Besides, they know I bring in views. And—” He reaches forward one long arm to hold open the elevator door for her— “I think maybe I can help. I _want_ to help.”

“Okay,” Rey says. “Then I’ll see you in the morning.”

* * *

Friday morning dawns grey and storming. Rey huddles underneath her umbrella during her walk to the train, hiding from the downpour. She hasn’t exactly forgotten that Ben was going to help her, but she is _very_ surprised when she finds him standing at her station with Poe and Kaydel.

“What are you all....” Rey hooks her apron over her head and wraps the ties around her waist twice before tying them in a bow. “What are you all doing here?”

“Four flavors, four of us,” Ben says, pointing to the group he’s assembled. “Let’s knock ‘em out all at once.”

Rey smiles. “You guys.” She makes a heart shape with her hands and presses it over her chest. “I love you all.”

“C’mon,” Kaydel says. “Talk us through what we’re doing here.”

What happens next is the most hysterical disaster Rey has ever witnessed in the test kitchen. They set up four-mini stations at Rey’s workspace, each with its own Kitchen-Aid, bowl, scale, wax lined loaf pan and various spatulas.

“Everyone stay close and do what I say,” Rey says, as they ready themselves to start. “Except Ben. Ben can do whatever he wants.”

Kaydel laughs. Poe rolls his eyes. He’s been scooting around the kitchen riding the wheeled stool Maz keeps by her computer while Finn follows him around with a handheld camera.

Rey can already tell keeping everyone’s attention is going to be a struggle. 

They cook a normal sized mixture of taffy and then divide it by four. And then chaos erupts. Kaydel’s taffy is not incorporating the dye and flavor in the way it needs to. Ben is not stirring his properly. (Actually, Ben gets so tired of her pestering him that he takes his bowl off to his station. When Rey calls out his name a few minutes later, all he tells her is not to ask, and from then on, she doesn’t.)

It’s the most fun Rey’s had in a long time. Her sides hurt from laughing so much. At one point Maz comes and sits down with a bowl of lunch to just watch the cacophony. Poe is not able to get his liquid to incorporate with the taffy, so Rey lets him work on stretching the lemon taffy she was working with in order to see if there’s anything she can do to fix his.

Ben comes over close to the end of everything to stretch his taffy with his mixer. His looks somehow perfect, to the point where Rey wonders what exact sorcery he conducted at his station while she was going out of her mind with Poe and Kaydel.

There’s more pandemonium, more laughter, and then finally, _finally_ , all four flavors are setting in their respective tins, and Rey and friends are looking at a huge mess of bowls, spoons, mixers, and more.

“That was the most stressful thing I’ve ever done here,” Kaydel says.

And Rey _laughs_ again. “I think I just blacked most of that out.”

Ben smiles. “Might be better that way.”

They disperse after some quick cleanup. Kaydel and Poe are off to their own projects, and Ben needs to go cook and eat some potatoes. Rey goes along with him, since the taffy needs to set for at least an hour and her crew is on break.

Ben’s show is so different from hers. He is filmed most of the time, but it’s almost exclusively from the neck or chest down. Most of the time the camera lingers on his hands, which, Rey has to admit, are _nice_ hands. 

He lets her try his french fries once he’s finished with them. They’re pretty good. For the purposes of the show, he didn’t season them very much, just with some salt, so Rey digs up some catsup and drowns them in it. She munches on fries while she watches the filming of Ben wrapping a potato in foil and putting it on the top rack of the dishwasher for five hours in an attempt to cook it. Another potato goes in a crock-pot, and he mashes a third potato in a waffle iron.

“I think I actually might take making Starburst over whatever sin you’ve committed against that poor waffle-iron-ed potato,” Rey tells Ben before popping another catsup drenched fry in her mouth.

The nice thing about Ben’s show is that it doesn’t matter if he talks to her while he films. Rey doesn’t know if he normally keeps up a conversation while he cooks, but it doesn’t seem to phase his crew. Since they don’t film his face, and everything else is voiceover, it’s fine for them to carry on a conversation.

“How is it?” Rey asks, as Ben takes a bit of his waffle iron smashed potato. “It looks like a waste of a good potato.

“Kinda dry,” Bey says. “I’m not a fan.”

“But gimmicks get views,” Rey says.

He offers her a forkful. 

“Nuh-uh,” she shakes her head firmly and goes back to her fries. “No, thank you.”

“Your loss.” Ben sets aside the plate. “We’re doing waffle-iron hash browns next.”

“See now _those_ , I would try,” Rey says. 

And she has just enough time to do that. By the time she’s digging into the rest of the plate of waffle fries—after Ben has eaten his bites for the camera—it’s almost time to head back to check on her taffy. 

The cameras are rolling, but Rey still reaches over to touch Ben’s shoulder. “Thank you for this morning,” she tells him. “I really appreciated your help.”

“Anytime,” he says.

Back at her workstation, Rey examines their handiwork. “I think this is actually the best batch yet,” she says. Of _course_ it’s Ben’s batch. “The yellow is soft enough to chew right away, and there’s not a super long stretch when you pull it apart.”

She cuts the slab of yellow taffy into Starburst size. “It’s not exactly gourmet,” she tells the camera, “I mean, the real Starburst actually uses fruit juice. But this is it. This is the last day of Starburst, and this is where we are.”

Rey moves on to cutting the pink taffy. “I’m kind of hoping that next week is a little kinder to me. This episode was brutal. I’m really thankful to Ben, though, for jumping in and saving the day and getting everyone to help.”

She looks up from her work to smile at the camera. “Teamwork in the RA test kitchen, making the dream work.”

Rey spends the next hour or so cutting wax paper into Starburst wrapper size squares and then meticulously wrapping each individual gourmet Starburst. She very much appreciates the fact that no one on her crew mentions that the orange flavor is more rock candy again. Three flavors will have to do.

Poe is failing at making doughnuts on the stove beside her. There’s something about yeast not proofing, but Rey is too fried to really notice. She does sort of appreciate though that she’s not the only one who finds that some days, cooking is _hard_.

He does come over to try her creation though, and his reaction is lovely.

“I kinda think you nailed it. Well, _we_ nailed it.” He gives the camera a suave look. “I mean the flavor is _amazing_. I didn’t help with that, though. That was all our girl, here.”

Rey puts a hand over her heart. “Thanks, Poe.”

Maz is not impressed. “I’m still not a fan,” she tells Rey, “But yours is much better than the originals.”

Kaydel stops by to try out the flavor she made. “I think I need to come by more often when you’re filming,” she says. “This was really fun.”

They may work back to back at their workstations, but Kaydel has a tendency to be downstairs in the actual offices more often than she’s in the Test Kitchen.

Luke even checks in. He usually doesn’t leave his office downstairs, but he happens to be passing by. He offers some kind words for the camera, and then he leaves.

They get their obligatory ending shots: Rey holding up her Starburst and the original side-by-side, as well as Rey grinning at the camera as she says “Here’s how you make a gourmet starburst!” 

Ben doesn’t come by. Rey wonders if he’s tried his dishwasher potato yet.

She keeps a few Starburst out for him, just in case he stops by as she cleans her workstation. It’s nearing 4pm, and while Rey could stay a little bit later, she’s exhausted. Her crew packed up around three, and there’s really nothing more to do in the test kitchen. She’ll record some voice-over for the last little bit of the episode on Monday while they prep for whatever next week's ordeal is going to be.

She could head down to her desk in the office and get some non _Rey Makes_ work done. She thinks she has some emails to go through, and one of these days she’s supposed to make one of her recipes on-camera for a shorter episode on the channel. It usually rotates between various chefs in the kitchen, and it’s been a while since it was Rey’s turn.

But she can do both of those things at home, and she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that the _big_ reason she wants to stay is to see Ben.

Maybe he’s gone home already? Reluctantly, Rey packs up her things, faces the realization that it is still raining outside, though if she remembers the weather forecast from this morning, it’s quite likely to freeze over the weekend. That’ll be fun.

If Rey keeps a careful eye out for Ben as she waits for the elevator, she tells herself it’s not a big deal. If she hesitates to get on the elevator once the doors swing open, she tells herself that’s not a big deal either.

And if her walk from the elevator to the front doors is slow, well, Rey’s done lying to herself. She really wanted to see him one more time. But she shakes open her umbrella and steps out into the downpour, telling herself that it’s not the end of the world that he didn’t walk out with her.

Besides, it’s not like she won’t see Ben on Monday.

It’s just going to be a very long weekend until then.

* * *

Saturday morning, Rey wakes up to find a text on her phone: _Dishwasher Potato was raw. Did not cook at all. I do not recommend it._

Warmth floods through her, and she smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come yell at me about these two on my [tumblr](andyouweremine.tumblr.com) and tell me what Rey should make next chapter.
> 
> [You know you wanna watch the one and only Claire Saffitz make some Starburst.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmRaWhae5e8)  
> [And you're super curious about every way to cook a potato.](https://youtu.be/hc3TEaT3WHA)  
> [And you know maybe you're craving some Pull Apart Garlic Bread?](https://gatherforbread.com/pull-apart-garlic-bread/)


	3. pop-tarts.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hi,” she says with the brightest-ever smile, “I’m Rey, we’re in the Test Kitchen, and today we’re making gourmet...Pop-Tarts!”  
> She bursts into a giggle. “And I am so excited!”

_ l _

* * *

_ I meant to tell you, _ Rey texts Ben on Saturday afternoon,  _ Your batch of Starburst was the best. _

He doesn’t reply.

* * *

When Rey comes into the test kitchen on Monday morning, there’s an odd looking lidded cup of something brown and weird on her workstation. One sniff confirms that it is, in fact, juiced potato.

Rey pours it down the sink with a smile. Then she spends her morning in a recording booth doing some voiceover for the Starburst episode.

When she finishes with lunch and gets back to the test kitchen, she’s met with her camera crew and Finn, who throws something at her face. It’s only really good instincts that help her catch the object before it hits her square in the nose.

And then she squeals in delight.

“Oh my god, you guys,  _ yes _ !” She’s grinning from ear to ear and she can’t even help it. “Best week ever.”

“You wanna tell the viewers why?”

“Because,” Rey says, cradling the blue cardboard box to her chest. “It’s Pop-Tarts. I’m so happy. It’s Pop-Tarts. Best day, you guys.”

There are approximately fifty boxes of Pop-Tarts on her workstation. Every conceivable color and flavor is there, all lined up. She helps her team assemble them into a  _ massive _ stack of Pop-Tarts, and dutifully climbs onto the wooden box behind them so she can be seen.

A member of her camera crew passes her the clapperboard. “This is Pop-Tarts introduction, take one!” she says excitedly. 

“Hi,” she says with the brightest-ever smile, “I’m Rey, we’re in the Test Kitchen, and today we’re making gourmet...Pop-Tarts!”

She bursts into a giggle. “And I am  _ so excited _ !”

She can see Finn trying to stifle a grin. “I am. I am  _ so _ excited. I think I grew up on Pop-Tarts. They were my every-day breakfast, and I loved  _ all _ of them. I would put the sweet or chocolate ones in the freezer to eat as treats.”

She carefully doesn’t mention that she had Pop-Tarts for breakfast last week. “I think there’s a lot we can work to improve here. We can definitely improve the pastry, make the filling with some high quality ingredients, I’m not sure about the frosting yet though. Still, those are some great places to start.”

Rey cracks open her first box. “This is the strawberry frosted,” she says as she pulls out a silver sleeve of Pop-Tarts. “I would say this is sort of what my mind goes to when I think of the quintessential Pop-Tart.”

With practiced movements, she opens the top of the silver sleeve and tips two of the pastries into her hands. She sets one down on a plate, but holds onto the other. “I thought we’d look at it untoasted first.”

Rey snaps the pastry in half and holds it up to the camera. “You can see the layers—and I like the proportions here—of pastry and filling and icing. I also love the little sprinkles.”

She takes a bite. “I will say, strictly from a pastry making standpoint, this doesn’t have the best qualities of a pastry. It’s not flakey, it’s not buttery, and it kind of overpowers the taste of the filling. I don’t really taste very much strawberry either.”

Rey pokes through a few more boxes, trying the cherry, the blueberry, and the chocolate fudge. She’s digging through some of the more obscure flavors when Poe and Rose come over.

“This stuff’ll rot your teeth,” Poe tells her, even as he takes a giant bite of a blueberry Pop-Tart. “But it’s  _ so good _ .”

“I didn’t really have Pop-Tarts growing up,” Rose says, even as she picks at the little sprinkles on one of the strawberry-flavored. “I think every once and a while my parents brought home toaster strudels?”

Poe is still chewing, but he turns to the camera and makes a face at the lens. Rose breaks off a dainty piece. “I’m really excited to see what you do with this one, Rey.”

“The question,” Rey says, studying one of the pastries in her hand, “is really: Do I have to be able to toast these?”

Poe speaks with his mouth full of Pop-Tart: “Duh.”

Rose taps her chin with her finger. “Yeah. I think you do. 

Her eyes grow wide. “Wait a minute, nobody said going into this that I had to be able to toast them. I have to toast mine?”

Ben chooses that exact moment to stop by. Rey feels her stomach leap with something. Excitement? Joy? She can’t put her finger on it. He eyes Poe with annoyance, then turns to Rey. “How are you going to make a frosting that doesn’t melt in the toaster?”

“I… don’t know.”

“Do they temper frosting?” Poe asks.

Rey levels him with a glare of exasperation. “No,” she says, relatively confident that they don’t. Even if that was something they  _ did _ , she would refuse based on the simple fact that she doesn’t want to.

She holds out an opened silver package of strawberry Pop-Tarts to Ben. “Did you have these growing up?”

He slides his thumb and forefinger inside, pinching the Pop-Tart and gingerly pulling it out. “No,” he says.

“Not at all?” Rose asks.

He shakes his head, but keeps his eyes on Rey. “My parents weren’t big on the idea of sugar for breakfast.”

“Well,” she says, trying for upbeat even though there’s a part of her that finds that so sad, “No time like the present to try it.”

Ben inspects it carefully.

“Do you want it hot?” Rey asks. He looks up at her quickly. She clarifies: “In the toaster?”

Before he can answer, she takes the Pop-Tart back, drops it into the toaster, and presses down the lever. “There,” she says. “I think you definitely need to try it heated for the first time.”

“If you say so,” Ben agrees. He’s dressed in a grey tee, black apron, and black jeans. His hair is pulled back into a ponytail behind his head. He looks lovely.

She tries not to think about it.

“Looking forward to trying the finished ones!” Poe says, grabbing two more silver packages as he walks away. Rey’d quite forgotten he was still there.

“Me too!” Rose chimes in. “I’ll check in on you in a little bit!”

“Thanks.” Rey smiles at her. The support is nice. She’s pretty excited for this one. She turns her attention back to Ben. “And thanks for bringing me some juice. It was a good start to the week.”

“Did you like it?” One of Ben’s eyebrows rises.

“Not especially,” Rey says cautiously, aware that the cameras are still on them. There’s the snapping sound of the toaster popping up. Rey gestures to Ben, and he carefully pulls the Pop-Tart out, tossing it from one hand to the other.

“It’s hot,” he says.

“That’s the  _ point _ ,” she tells him. “Try it.”

He takes the smallest bite, and she’s pretty sure he got neither frosting nor filling in that mouthful. “Ben,” she chides, “Take an  _ actual bite _ .”

He narrows his eyes at her, but lifts the pastry back up to his lips and bites in. Rey waits while he chews, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Man,” he says. “I don’t know why I wanted these so badly as a kid.”

Rey tilts her head and stares at him. “You wanted Pop-Tarts as a kid?” 

“Was there a kid who  _ didn’t _ want Pop-Tarts for breakfast?” he says.

He’s got her there. The idea of Ben as a kid begging his parents for Pop-Tarts, but never getting them is a strange one. “What did you even eat for breakfast?

“Eggs,” he replies. “Toast. Oatmeal. Granola. Fruit. Sometimes cereal.”

And Rey can kind of picture it, so clearly. It’s a combination of scenes from movies and her imagining of what Ben’s childhood must have been like. Ben in a kitchen bathed in sunlight, someone humming as they set a plate of eggs, bacon, toast and fruit in front of him, following it up with a glass of orange juice.

She thinks of cold, grey mornings. Of grabbing a set of Pop-Tarts as soon as they rose from the toaster and running out the front door, not stopping to eat at a table, but biting into her breakfast as she jogged down the sidewalk to the bus, making sure to scarf down everything before they arrived at school. She thinks of the wind biting at her nose and the cold sinking into her skin. She thinks of the pinch as she ran in too-small boots and a too-large jacket. 

Ben uses his forefinger to scratch above his eyebrow. “They’re fine, Rey. I don’t dislike them. I just expected something more… magical.”

Reality settles on her like a warm blanket. Those mornings are over. She curls her toes in her shoes. They’re not too small and they don’t hurt. She’s not cold. The sun is shining through the test kitchen windows.

She clears her throat. “I’ll put “magical” on the requirements for the gourmet version.”

He smiles, but just barely. She wonders if her face showed a little bit too much of the place where her mind had wandered.

“Stop by later this week?” she asks as he makes to leave.

He nods his head once. “Sure.”

Rey turns back to the camera with a smile that she doesn’t feel. “All right!” she says cheerily. “Let’s figure out how to make some gourmet Pop-Tarts!”

As is her usual routine, Rey scoops up the boxes of Pop-Tarts and carries them over to the opposite counter, leaving behind one box of the traditional strawberry frosted. Once that’s done, she gets out a knife, a cutting board, and her trusty ruler, and starts to take some notes.

Each pastry is 7.5 centimeters by 11 centimeters. She cuts into them crossways and determines that the inner filling is a 6-by-9 centimeter rectangle.

She puts half of a package into the toaster, and then sets it next to an untoasted Pop-Tart. After staring down at them for a few moments, Rey looks up at Finn. “There’s no difference,” she says flatly. “Apart from the temperature, nothing changed.”

“Break it open,” Finn says from behind the camera. Rey obliges. She concedes that the filling is a little more gooey in texture, but that otherwise nothing has changed.

“I’m really not sure how to keep the frosting from melting,” she says, glancing down at the Pop-Tart in her hand with a frown. “But there’s three things to focus on here, the pastry, the filling, and the frosting. So we’re going to take things one at a time, and we’ll just worry about the frosting last.”

There’s not enough time left in the day to really get started on anything, so they sketch out a vague plan for the week and call a wrap on filming for the day.

* * *

The next morning, Rey is headed to her station with a cup of coffee when Finn settles in to walk beside her. “Where do you want to start?” Finn asks.

Pursing her lips, Rey thinks for a second. “Pastry,” she concludes finally. “It needs to chill, so while it’s doing that, we can do some testing on the filling.”

They wait to start filming so Rey has a few minutes to gather together what she needs to work on the dough. While she’s doing that, she stops by Kaydel’s station to say good morning. Kaydel offers her a fresh glass of orange juice and a few leftover chocolate chip pancakes that weren’t quite pretty enough for her photoshoot.

Rey nibbles on her snack—her breakfast, really, since she didn’t grab anything before she left her apartment this morning—and sets to work making pastry dough. Her preferred recipe is scribbled out in her own handwriting in a black spiral notebook, where she keeps most of her draft Test Kitchen recipes.

“I’m making three batches,” Rey tells the camera as she sifts flour into her food processor. She adds in salt, sugar, and butter, and grinds it up until it’s mealy. “We’re not doing anything very complicated here. I think if people wanted to make this one at home, they could even use store bought dough, but I think it would be a travesty not to make my own for this particular experiment.”

“It needs to be magical,” Finn reminds her from off-camera.

Rey looks  _ right _ at the camera lens, hoping it picks up her playful exasperation. “Somebody knock some sense into me the next time I set up unrealistic goals for myself. What even qualifies as magical?”

“I’ll tell you to stop setting up unrealistic goals for yourself when you stop going all heart-eyes when you see Ben Solo,” is Finn’s reply.

Rey swears her face bursts into flames. Shit, if he lets editing use this take in the final video she is going to  _ murder _ him.

She could answer. She could deny it. She could do any number of things. Instead she slams her thumb down on the button of the food processor to start blinding her ingredients.

She doesn’t speak until she’s shaking her mixture out into a silver bowl.

“Then,” she says, again to the camera, “Add in water, mix until it forms a dough, then wrap it with plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge to chill and rest.”

“Pastry dough and chill?” Poe jokes, walking by as she slides the tray of dough into the fridge. Rey rolls her eyes at him. She turns to Finn. “Now I get to do that two more times!”

She measures, mixes, rolls out, wraps, and fridges two more sets of dough. They break for lunch, and Finn pulls her aside. “Hey,” he says, “I shouldn’t have said that. I just… I’ve been noticing the two of you have been a little…  _ something  _ for a while now. I shouldn’t have teased you about it on camera. That was thoughtless of me.”

Rey lets him pull her into a side hug. Finn’s her guy. From those dark chocolate eyes all the way to the soft heart that would never, ever do anything to intentionally hurt her. He’s trustworthy, and she trusts him. Which is what makes moments like this happen. He knows he has her trust, and he knows that’s not something to take for granted.

Keeping his arm around his shoulders, he shakes her, playfully. “C’mon,” he says, “You wanna walk to Chewie’s for lunch with me? My treat. Rose and I were gonna go, but she texted me that her shoot is going to go long and she’ll be breaking later. I promised her I’d bring back one of those roast beef sandwiches she loves. And a lemon bar.”

Rey grins wide.  _ Chewie’s Deli _ is pretty much her favorite restaurant in the city. His sub sandwiches are better than deep dish and  _ nothing _ in Chicago is better than deep dish. Nothing.

“You are on,” she tells him. “I want my triple meat Italian sub with swiss, those amazing sweet potato chips, that raspberry green tea, and my own lemon bar.”

He chuckles. “C’mon, let’s go.”

They make their way downstairs, stopping to grab their coats on the way. It’s chilly outside, but not unbearably so as they walk the quick few blocks to  _ Chewie’s _ .

Rey used to waitress here, back in her pre-Test Kitchen days. She waitressed, then she baked, then she got the job at RA and moved a few blocks away. Still, she likes walking into the quaint little deli. Tables and chairs—all mismatched—are crammed into every possible nook and cranny. There’s a long counter along one side of the narrow room, a long glass display case filled with breads, doughnuts, pastries and desserts. Rey remembers making them here, early in the morning before the deli opened—the quiet of the empty kitchen, the heat of the industrial ovens.

She waives at Chewie as he hustles by, arms loaded with trays of sandwiches, soups, and other treats. He barks a hello at her and Finn as they squeeze into a tiny little two-chaired table against one of the walls. 

“Usual?” he yells from across the room, setting down white oval plates on a tiny table of four.

“Yes, please!” She hollers back, peeling off her knit gloves and shaking off her coat. She balls up her gloves, scarf and hat, and slides them into her coat sleeve before settling the coat across the back of her chair

“I always forget you two know each other,” Finn says, taking off his own coat before sitting down.

“He’s the reason I’m at the test kitchen,” Rey says. “The reason I even auditioned for you. Chewie’s old friends with Luke and Leia.”

Finn smiles up at the server who sets down two mugs and fills them with coffee without even being asked. “I’ll have your raspberry green tea out in a moment.” She looks at Finn. “Anything for you?”

“Same, thanks,” he says. He places his to-go order for Rose, and the waitress hurries off to put in the order.

Finn leans forward as soon as the waitress is out of earshot. “So. You wanna talk?”

Rey makes a face and reaches for her coffee. The heat of the white ceramic mug feels amazing on her cold fingers. “What do you want to talk about, Finn? Ben Solo?”

He shrugs. “It’s a good start. What’s going on with you two? Not—” he holds his hands up in a surrendering gesture— “That it is  _ any _ of my business.”

Rey stares down at her coffee for a moment before grabbing a few packets of sugar to dump in. “I don’t know. How’s that for an answer?”

“But you  _ like _ him?”

Rey opens her mouth, then shuts it. “I don’t not like him.”

Finn narrows his eyes. “Meaning you  _ do _ like him.”

“We’re friends,” she says. “I think.”

He gives her a look. “I don’t think Ben Solo  _ has _ friends.”

“He does!” Why she’s jumping right to his defence, Rey isn’t sure. Maybe it’s that she’s  _ met _ them. In a cozy little bar, over some of the best appletinis. He  _ has  _ friends. She knows it.

Saying anything more feels like a breach of Ben’s trust though, so she keeps quiet. She’s not even sure why or how it feels like a breach of trust. It’s not like he’s asked her to not tell anybody about it. But he  _ doesn’t _ tell anybody about them, at least not that she knows, so it doesn’t seem like it’s her place to.

Then again, maybe nobody asks? Maybe nobody asks, and Ben never says anything. Rey thinks that’s kind of sad. People in the test kitchen assume he’s alone, and they just… let him be like that? Let him stay alone?

Something inside her heart sinks a little. Suddenly she wants very much to be back in the test kitchen, wants to go find Ben, wants to check in on whatever it is he’s doing today. She thinks he’s still boiling potatoes, maybe?

She’s distracted by the waitress coming back with their plastic cups of raspberry iced tea and plates piled high with sandwiches and chips.

“I’ll be back with your to-go order in a few,” she tells them.

Rey holds up her hand. “Wait! Can I get an extra lemon bar to go?”

The waitress smiles and nods. “Bring it over in a jiffy.”

Finn pops a chip in his mouth and chews slowly. Swallowing, he says, “So you and Solo are friends?”

“Maybe? I’m not sure.” Rey digs into her sandwich.

“And you like him? Maybe a little more than that.”

Rey throws a sweet potato chip at him. “I don’t know, Finn. I just… I don’t know.”

“Well,” Finn says, “You look at him like you like him. Like a heart-eyes emoji with a chef’s hat.”

Mouth full, Rey frowns at him. Oh, god. Is he right?  _ Does  _ she look at Ben like that?

“Yeah,” Finn draws the word out, long and slow. “You really do.”

Rey hides her face in her hands. “I can’t talk about this right now. I can’t  _ think _ about this right now.”

“So don’t,” Finn says. “Let’s just have a nice lunch. I won’t tease you on camera—or off-camera—and you just… if you ever want to let me know something, you… can just… let me know.”

Rey bursts out laughing. “If there is anything worth telling, I’ll tell you. At some point. Maybe.”

They finish out the rest of lunch. Finn pays, but Rey throws him a few dollars for the lemon square she’s bringing back to the test kitchen.

He looks a little askance at her, but doesn’t ask about it. Maybe he thinks she’s saving it for tomorrow, since she already had hers while they sat at the table.

Rey doesn’t really care. They walk the few blocks back to the test kitchen, ride up the elevator, and Rey makes a quick stop to drop the lemon bar off in one of the fridges. She’ll give it to Ben later.

She grabs her apron, ties it around her waist, and reaches back to flip her hair over the tie around her neck. When the cameras start rolling, she sets down two plastic cartons of fresh strawberries. Cracking her knuckles, she says, “Alright, strawberry filling, here we come!”

Rey chats with Finn and Kaydel as she methodically cuts up her strawberries and drops them one-by-one into a blender. She purees them, then pours them into a pot and stands over them to occasionally stir the mixture while she boils it down.

“This is really exciting,” Rey tells the camera dryly. She chats a little bit about the texture she’s going for, a bit about how she  _ could _ use store bought jam if she really wanted to but  _ gourmet _ .

And magic, she thinks to herself. She needs a little extra magic. Eventually, she transfers the strawberry mixture onto a baking sheet and pops it into an oven to encourage it to thicken even more. That also requires constant mixing, so as much as Rey would  _ like _ to sneak away to see Ben, it’s not feasible.

“Rey,” Poe says from a few stations back. “Will I be able to try some Pop-Tart type thing today?”

She wobbles her hand at him.

Rey juices some lemon, adds some vanilla to the jam, and then—

“Take fifteen?” Finn says. “I need a break.”

He needs a break, Rey thinks, to bring food to Rose and check in on her. Whatever recipes she’s filming has had her running around the city this afternoon. “Let me put this in the fridge?” Rey says.

She checks her watch. Three forty-five. That’s pretty late for Rose not to have eaten lunch. Rey debates. “I’m not sure how much more of this I have in me today,” she tells Finn. “Wrap for the day?”

He considers. “Sure. We can get in an earlier call time tomorrow.”

Rey smiles. “Great.”

The extra hour and fifteen minutes gives her time to clean up her station, scrub the pot she used for the strawberries, and do a little brainstorming for her frosting and sprinkles.

The sprinkles, Rey thinks, should be easy. She knows how to make sprinkles. The frosting.... The frosting that won’t  _ melt _ in a toaster? That’s a little dicier.

At quarter till five, Rey takes the lemon bar she saved and goes to find Ben. The studio for his show is empty, and she doesn’t think he had any meetings today, so maybe he took off early?

Before she gives up, she checks the office on a floor below the test kitchen. It’s nearly empty, but Ben’s not there. Rey gives up, sits at her own desk, and checks through her email. Nothing of any particular importance jumps out at her, except for a new email of pre-screened comments for her.

Rey won’t ever dip her toe into the comments section on  _ YouForce _ . It’s just way too dangerous and filled with people being mean. Every few days, though, she gets an email with nice comments, or at least polite comments. She always likes seeing the ones where people says the new upload of a video made their day. Same for the ones where people call her cute or adorable. One or two mention her glee at using the mallet to smash the coconuts a few weeks ago, and another points out how relieved that she used eye protection.

Her distraction lasts longer than fifteen minutes, and when Rey glances at her watch next, it’s a quarter  _ after _ five. She leans back in her chair, stretching her arms up to the ceiling and groaning slightly. Her bed sounds really good. She should head home. Eat Ben’s lemon bar for dinner, since he must have left early today.

She pulls open one of her desk drawers to grab her bag and realizes—

...her purse is upstairs. Dammit.

Rey grabs the paper bag with the lemon bar and takes the quick elevator ride up to the Test Kitchen.

Where she finds Ben. Pacing. In front of her station.

From her place in the doorway, Rey moves into the kitchen and says, “Ben? Everything okay?”

He  _ jumps _ . Her heart starts racing. Maybe everything’s not okay, maybe—

“I was,” he swallows. Hard. “I was going to walk you out.”

Was he—

Was he  _ waiting _ ?

She almost laughs. “I was looking for you, actually. Finn and I went to Chewie’s for lunch, and I brought you back a lemon bar.” She holds out the bag like it’s a peace offering.

His face, which had been filled with concern, softens into something warm and grateful as he takes the bag. “Thank you, Rey.”

“They’re my favorite,” she tells him. “To eat and to make. When I worked there, I mean. I… I worked there.”

He smiles at her. It’s soft, and it fills her heart like a warm glow. Like a mug of hot coffee against cold hands. Like the world isn’t cold anymore.

“Can I give you a ride home?” he asks.

She smiles. “I’d like that.”

They’re standing in the elevator as it goes down, down, when Ben asks, “You worked at Chewie’s?”

She nods. “Before I came here. I waitressed for a little, then I moved to baking. Breads. Pastries. All that.”

He shakes his head. “How did I never notice you?”

“You’ve eaten there?” she asks. “I don’t think I was very noticeable.”

“You are,” he says quickly, almost without thinking.

“Oh,” she breathes the word. Then again. “Oh.”

When they reach his car, he opens the passenger’s side door for her. He doesn’t have to ask for directions to her apartment this time.

In fact, when she’s climbing out of the car, he leans across the divider between the front seats and says: “Would you like a ride? Tomorrow? I drive right by you.”

Her heart does a flip.  _ Yes _ .

“I’d like that,” is all she says, even though her brain is swirling with questions.  _ Do I like you? Do you like me? Is this? Are we? _

“I’ll text when I’m outside,” he tells her, and then she shuts the passenger’s door with another thank you.

She thinks that maybe he doesn’t drive away until he’s watched her get safely inside the building. Rey sets down her bag, hangs up her coat, pulls off her hat, scarf, and gloves. 

Then she goes to her window, the one that looks down over the street in front of her apartment building. His car isn’t there. She didn’t think it would be. She presses her nose to the cool glass.

And she wonders.

* * *

Light flakes of snow are swirling down on Wednesday morning when Rey runs out of her apartment to Ben’s car. She’s got half a bagel clenched between her teeth, and she rips a bite out of it as she opens the passenger’s door and climbs inside.

Ben just stares at her. She chews. Swallows. “Good morning,” she says, a little sheepishly. “I overslept.”

He just smiles at her a little bit. Then, he holds out a Starbucks travel cup. “Coffee?” he offers.

It’s kind of ridiculous, because the Test Kitchen has some really great coffee, but Rey notes that he has his own cup in the cup holder between them.

She takes the coffee gratefully. “Thank you,” she says. “That was really sweet.”

He turns his head to focus his eyes back on the road. She wonders if his cheeks are pink from the cold.

She takes a sip of her coffee. It’s hot, but not to the point where she would burn her tongue. As she does, she settles back into her seat. It’s warm. Rey glances down at the buttons in between the seats and sees that not only is the seat-warmer on the driver’s side going, but the seat warmer for the passenger’s side is also running.

He thought ahead enough to bring her coffee, and turn on the seat warmer for the passenger’s side. Rey can’t help it. She smiles.

“I should have asked if it was okay to eat in your car,” she says, glancing down at her bagel.

“It’s fine,” he says softly. “I don’t mind.”

“If you do, you need to tell me,” Rey says. “I won’t do it again.”

He glances quickly at her as he pulls up to a stoplight. “Drink your coffee, Rey.”

She takes another slow sip, smiling into the coffee mug. They ride the rest of the way to the test kitchen in silence. Rey watches Ben drive, watches the grip of his black-gloved hands on the steering wheel. 

He pulls into the parking garage, and Rey stops staring at him. Finn’s right. She’s totally staring at him with heart eyes.

Rey turns away from Ben, keeping her eyes on the passenger window as he pulls into a parking space. She’s so lost in the swirls of emotion that she totally misses Ben walking around the car to open her door for her. 

She stammers out a thank you.

“What, uh…” she scrambles a little for a topic of conversation as they head inside. “What are you working on this week?”

“Not potatoes,” Ben says. “We wrapped that yesterday. We’re on a break for the rest of this week while I…”

He hesitates just a little bit too long. Rey is dying to ask: “While you what?” But she waits.

Ben clears his throat. “Well, we’re on a break from filming.”

She still desperately wants to ask why, but the ding of the elevator distracts them both. They step inside. Ben pushes the button for their floor. “If you finish up Pop-Tarts by Friday,” Ben says, “I’m filming a few videos on holiday pies. I told my—I told Leia that you should join me.”

It’s not exactly a secret that Leia Organa-Solo is Ben’s mother. It  _ is _ interesting to Rey that Ben usually calls her “Leia” and not “Mom”.

It’s even more interesting that this is the first time he’s ever slipped up while talking to her. That’s really unusual. It takes the slow walk to the test kitchen and a quick tidy and organization of her station for the other implication behind their conversation to sink in.

Ben talked to his  _ mom _ about her. In a work context, but still. His  _ Mom _ .

What had he said? What did Leia say? What—

“What’s the plan for today?” Finn asks. The cameras are rolling as Rey sets down a set of baking sheets, and then bends to dig in a drawer for a rolling pin.

“Uh, well…” Rey’s hand hovers over one rolling pin, then she changes her mind and grabs the other without really thinking about it. “We’ll do some tests of the dough with the filling. Then if everything works out we can make some sprinkles and test some frosting.”

She stands up, rolling pin in hand. “I’m  _ not _ excited about the frosting.”

“But the sprinkles?” Finn asks. 

Rey smiles at the camera lens. “Who  _ doesn’t  _ get excited about sprinkles? Everybody loves sprinkles.”

“True!” Poe yells from across the room. “Everyone loves sprinkles! Even  _ Ben _ loves sprinkles.”

Finn swirls the camera around so quickly to get Ben’s reaction on camera that Rey is surprised he doesn’t get whiplash. Ben’s face is hiding behind a refrigerator door, so neither Rey nor the camera get to see his expression. 

She  _ does _ get to see the solitary finger he holds up to Poe. That will probably be blurred out for  _ YouForce _ . Shame.

“Right.” Rey says as the camera settles back on her. “Let’s make some Pop-Tarts!”

She’s slow and methodical as she rolls out the first batch of her dough. It needs to be an even layer, and she’s hoping to be able to get at least six rectangles out of it for the bottoms of her Pop-Tarts. 

Rey uses a ruler to indent the dough to make marks for her to cut. Once she has six rectangles, she lays them out on a baking sheet and moves onto her next batch of dough. She uses the same process to cut out six more rectangles, but—

“Tell us what you’re doing,” Finn says.

Rey looks up at the camera. “These are the tops of the Pop-Tarts. I’m docking them—poking little holes with a wooden skewer—so that when the filling bubbles up it has somewhere to go.” 

She finishes the last one and sets the skewer aside. “All right.” She frowns down at her pastries. “Now I need to figure out a good way to get the jam where it needs to be.”

Rey looks up at the camera. “I have a plan,” she says.

And then she walks away. She can sort of hear her crew following her to the other side of the kitchen, but she’s on a mission to find something specific. She starts with the most likely drawers to have what she’s looking for, then—

“What are you doing?”

Rey winces. Then confesses. “Looking for a Silpat.”

Maz raises an eyebrow. “I know what happens when you look for things, Rey.”

“Maz,” Rey says, drawing out the Test Kitchen Manager’s name, “Can I have your permission to cut up a silpat?”

“You need to cut up a Silpat?” She tips her head to the side. “Why do you need to cut up a Silpat?”

Rey just cuts to the chase. “I’m trying to make a stencil to fill the Pop-Tarts with my strawberry jam.”

Maz laughs, shaking her head in amusement. “Cut up whatever you like, Rey.”

Rey grins, jumping to her feet and wrapping her arms around Maz. “Thanks, Maz.”

She grabs two Silpats, one as a backup, and heads back to her station. A quick flick open of one of her drawers and Rey has her choice of tools. She uses a sharpie to draw a rectangle the size of her Pop-Tarts. Then she uses her favorite pair of scissors to cut it out. She draws a smaller rectangle inside of that and cuts out the middle.

Rey holds it up to the camera, looking through it. “Here we go,” she says. She examines her homemade stencil. “I think I need to cut out another one and glue them together, to make it a little bit deeper.”

She cuts out a second rectangle, glues them together, and they have a five minute break while they wait for the glue to dry.

Rey checks the kitchen for Ben, but he’s nowhere to be seen. She gets herself a cup of coffee, loads it up with cream and sugar, and is back at her station to start assembling her Pop-Tarts before Finn can do something crazy like send out a search party for her.

Rey talks through the assembly of the first Pop-Tart, explaining how she’s using her stensil to keep the jam in a nice rectangle, then how she’s using an egg wash along the sides to help the top and bottom pastries stick together. She uses a brush to put more egg wash on the top of the pastry, and then repeats the process two more times. She wants to test a batch first before she makes more than a couple, and this will help her see how she’s doing.

And how she’s doing, thirty or so minutes later when she pulls the tray out of the oven, is not half bad.

Rey sets down the baking sheet on a trivet to cool and checks out her creations. “They  _ really _ puffed up,” she says, using the back of a fork to point to the area she’s talking about. “See how flakey the pastry got? That’s cause it’s well-made pastry. The originals do not exactly use excellent pastry.”

The first Pop-Tart faired better than the second, which burst a hole in its side and oozed out strawberry jam in a little pool surrounding one of the corners. The third looks good as well.

When the Pop-Tarts have cooled enough for her to touch without burning herself, Rey picks up the first, the one that’s intact, and holds it up next to a freshly opened original Strawberry Pop-Tart. “Look at how much taller mine are?” she laughs. “Like, seriously, they’re so tall and flakey compared to the original. It’s like three times as tall.”

She breaks hers apart, holding up the cross section to the camera so Finn can get a good look at the layers of pastry and jam.

As if summoned by the sound—or smell? They do smell  _ really good _ —of Rey’s success, Poe shows up half a second later.

“Holy—” he cuts himself off with a glance to the camera. “Rey, look at your  _ pastry _ !”

“Yeah,” she grins at him. “I really nailed it.”

Poe turns the Pop-Tart over in his hands. He takes an enormous bite. “Okay, but that is  _ good _ .” 

He chews happily. His mouth is still full when he suddenly lifts a hand and shouts: “Hey! Ben! C’mere!”

Rey hadn’t seen Ben re-enter the kitchen, but suddenly he’s there, next to Poe, who is cutting the Pop-Tart he just bit into so Ben can try some Pop-Tart that does  _ not _ have a bite taken out of it. “Try this,” Poe says, handing it to him.

Ben examines it much in the same way Poe did. He checks the bottom, the top, the corners, looks at the layers. He even bends his head a little to sniff at the pastry and the jam. 

“Will this fit in a toaster?” Ben finally asks.

She smacks him playfully on the shoulder. “One problem at a time.”

Rose comes up behind Rey, and she turns away from Ben for a second to let Rose have her own taste test.

When she turns back around, Ben is staring at her. “This is  _ incredible _ ,” he tells her. “I would eat this for breakfast every day.”

Her heart  _ leaps _ , which is absolutely crazy. She thinks for half a second she would  _ make _ him homemade Pop-Tarts for breakfast every day if only he would keep looking at her like that. 

And  _ that _ is a dangerous thought. “Woah,” Rey says carefully. “I haven’t even frosted them yet.”

“They don’t need it,” Ben says, right before he takes a second bite.

“They kind of do,” Rose counters. “Still, Rey, these are  _ so good _ . I’m super excited for them to get frosting.”

“They’re kind of…” Poe shrugs. “They’re kind of so good, Rey, that I think you’ve surpassed Pop-Tarts and made a toaster strudel.

“Oh!” Rey says, “I always wanted to try those as a kid. You could make your own design on top with a packet of frosting.”

She does not say: “None of my foster homes would have spent the extra money on toaster pastries just cause I wanted one.”

“I think he’s right,” says Rose. “These are too flakey for Pop-Tarts.”

Ben looks first to Poe and then to Rose. “Are you out of your  _ minds _ ?” He turns his attention to Rey. “Don’t change a damn thing.”

She blushes. It sweeps over her cheeks and down her neck. “Well,” she starts, “I should probably put frosting on them.”

This is the part of doing her show that Rey loves: feeding people good food. At home, she eats ramen and boxed mac and cheese, but other people? Other people are worth cooking for. She’s never had anyone to cook for her, but she can cook for others, make them delicious food.

“Rey?” Ben asks. “Did you try this yet?”

“I—” Rey blinks. She actually hasn’t yet. “I was a little distracted by how good they looked,” she says, a little sheepishly. 

“Oh my God,” Rose exclaims. “Rey, take a bite. It’s  _ so _ good.”

Rey does. It  _ is _ good. The pastry layers are buttery and flakey, and the filling is a good balance of sweet and strawberry. Forget about  _ frosting _ . Ben has a point. It’s  _ really _ good.

“I crushed it,” she agrees. “Even without the frosting.”

Her day only gets better when Ben high-fives her and they get an excuse to practice their signature high-five for the cameras. Rey cares less about the cameras and more about the fact that Ben remembers what she showed him.

Rey spends her afternoon making sprinkles and testing frosting. It’s some of the  _ most  _ fun. She can’t help the smile on her face as she whips up egg whites until they’re nice and foamy before slowly adding in powdered sugar until she gets it to the consistency she wants. Thick. Smooth.

Then she divides her icing across five little glass bowls. She adds food coloring, mixes, adds a little more, mixes again. It takes a bit of time to get the shades of colors she wants, and she still thinks hers are a little bit too bright.

Orange. Red. Pink. Green. Yellow.

Rey takes a piece of parchment paper and lays it out on her workstation counter. She spreads a thin layer of each color in a long strip across the paper. “Once this dries, I’ll break it up into little bits to make sprinkles to try to get the shapes to match the original Pop-Tarts,” she explains as she works.

Once it’s done, she surveys her work, poking at it carefully with her first finger. “This is going to take a while to dry,” she tells the cameras. “I think we’re looking at letting this sit at  _ least _ overnight, unless I want to put it in the dehydrator. I don’t really want to do that.”

“Why?” Finn asks.

Rey purses her lips. “I think it would be nice to keep this recipe doable for the viewers. Not a lot of people keep a dehydrator next to their crock-pot. Plus, leaving them overnight should be fine.”

They end the day with some icing tests. There are three types that Rey wants to try. All of them are simple variations of two ingredients. She combines powdered sugar with egg white to make royal icing, and then powdered sugar and water, and powdered sugar and milk.

Her final act of the day is to spread her three types of frosting out on her two homemade Pop-Tarts that she practically had to hide from Poe to keep safe. Mentally, she divides each in half so she has four spots to put icing. One, she’ll leave blank as a control, then she’ll fill the other half of that Pop-Tart with the egg white and sugar mix. Her second Pop-Tart will get half powdered sugar and water, and half powdered sugar and milk.

“That’s gonna have to dry overnight too,” Rey says. “We can toast them in the morning.” It’s perfect timing, really. They wrap for the day. Rey cleans up her station, taking the last few minutes to wipe down her counter.

“Lift home?” She looks up to see Ben leaning against the refrigerator across from her. Any earlier in the day and he would be hidden by her camera crew, but they’ve left the Test Kitchen. Only Kaydel is still in the room, and her back is turned to Rey as she hums through cleaning up her own workspace.

“Please,” Rey says, following it up with a quick, “If you don’t mind.” It’s not raining or snowing. It’s cold outside, and likely  _ very  _ windy, but not otherwise nasty weather. There’s no real excuse for him to give her a ride home unless he wants to.

And maybe he wants to. She definitely wants him to.

She wonders, for a moment, what Kaydel thinks. And then she decides she doesn’t care.

Then, halfway home, Ben hits her with, “What are your plans next week?”

“Oh,” she says, waving a hand. “You know they never tell me what snack-food I’m doing before hand. And I really couldn’t even guess even if I wanted—”

“No,” he interrupts. “For Thanksgiving.”

Rey does the math in her head.

Shit.

Next week is Thanksgiving. She should  _ know _ that, except it’s not really like it’s been talked about a lot around the kitchen. They filmed Thanksgiving episodes in early October. They’re filming New Years Eve episodes right now. Maybe a few people are working on some Christmas projects still, but in Rey’s head, Thanksgiving has kind of already happened. She had turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie over a month ago when the dishes were all over the kitchen.

“I—” She swallows. She doesn’t know how to say that she has no plans. That she never has plans. She’ll probably throw a freezer meal in the microwave and watch reruns of  _ Jeopardy  _ or something. She usually gets invited to someone’s friendsgiving celebration the day after, or a few days before, but Rey can’t recall getting any texts or dates from Finn, Poe, Rose, or Kaydel.

It’s not like Rey has a family to go see. Thanksgiving may as well just be a Thursday.

“Mom wanted to invite you to come celebrate with us, if you weren’t busy,” Ben says, either not noticing or ignoring the fact that she hasn’t actually answered him. “It’s at the Condo, of course, in Wilmette. You can ride up with me, if you like. I’ll be spending the night, but I can give you a ride back the day after—if you come, that is.”

She wants to ask why. She wants to tell him that no, she has plans. She wants—

“Ben?” Rey bites her lip. She doesn’t even know what she wants to ask. 

He sighs. “Okay, fine, so Poe may have mentioned something. Well, not directly. I may have overheard him. And I may have told my mom I wanted to bring someone. It doesn’t…” 

They’ve pulled up in front of Rey’s apartment building. Ben stops talking in order to back himself into a parallel parking space. When he’s finished, he pinches the bridge of his nose. “It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it too, I just…”

Everything inside Rey is screaming that she needs to run. This conversation is terrifying. Ben  _ knowing _ this about her, understanding this about her, makes her feel vulnerable in a way that she hates with every cell of her body.

But then Ben turns to her, and all she sees in his eyes is kindness. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

“I’m not,” she lies.

His eyes narrow a bit at her, searching, perplexed. He knows she’s lying.

She needs to get out of the car. She needs to get up to her apartment where it’s safe. She needs to cry, long and hard, because no one gets to know this. No one  _ needs _ to know this, and of all the people who don’t need to know this about her Ben is the one who needs to know it the least.

She hates being alone. She hates when people bend over backwards when they find out that she’s alone.

And if she’s honest with herself, really, truly honest: She really,  _ really _ does want to go to the Solo’s for Thanksgiving.

She fumbles with the door handle so badly eventually Ben has to reach over her and pull it himself. He says her name as he does, and she closes her eyes tightly, tears pricking at the corners. 

She is  _ not _ going to cry. Not here. Not about this. She’s just not.

“Think about it,” Ben says, as he pushes her door open. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Rey slams her thumb down on the button for her seatbelt and bolts from the car. She doesn’t turn around to waive. And she doesn’t let herself cry until her apartment door is shut behind her.

* * *

“Rey Makes Pop-Tarts, Day Four, Take One.” Rey snaps down the clapperboard. “Here we gooooo!” she says excitedly. She’s already set out the four-slice toaster so she can test all her different frosting styles.

She has not seen Ben. She texted him not to pick her up and took the El in a little earlier than normal. A member of her crew pulls out her tray of pastries from the fridge and passes it over, followed by—

Rey squeals, and she doesn’t even have to fake it. “Toaster strudel!”

She looks right at Finn, who shrugs and makes a face. Odd.

“Who brought these?” she asks her team, but no one seems to know.

Rey flips the box over. There’s a post-it. Pink. Strong, block handwriting.

_ I overstepped. I’m sorry.  _

_ \- Ben _

Rey rips off the note, crumples it up, and slips it into her apron pocket. “Okay,” she says, “This is why God made four-slice toasters. First two slices are for our icing test, second two are for toaster pastries.”

Rey takes great delight in decorating her own toaster pastry and trying it on camera. Then she asks for a five minute break, during which time she takes the icing packet again, eyes the second toaster pastry, and pipes out a pattern of swirls and flowers, and in the middle, two words. She has to think carefully about what she wants to say, since there’s not a lot of room. Finally, she decides on:

_ I know. _

She leaves it on Ben’s station. Nobody asks her about it. Nobody asks her if she knows who brought the toaster strudels.

Rey moves on to testing and inspecting her icing. “The one with the water got bubbly and weird. The one with the milk melted onto the metal sides of the toaster, and I think the royal icing is probably our winner here.”

She does some taste-testing of her Pop-Tarts with the frosting. “Yeah,” she tells Finn, wiping her hands on her apron. “Royal icing is the way to go here.”

“So what next?”

“I need to finish my sprinkles, and then make a brand new batch that puts all the pieces together.”

Rey takes the dried frosting and starts to break it into small bits with her hands. It gives her the uneven texture that she wants for her Pop-Tart sprinkles. She chops them a little bit finer with her knife.

“The sprinkles kind of look like Pop Rocks,” Poe says, as he passes by.

Rey points at him. “Do  _ not _ say Pop Rocks,” she threatens. 

“What?” Poe says innocently, like he  _ doesn’t _ know that her comments section has been clamoring for her to do Pop Rocks for the past month.

Rey glares at him as he heads back to his station. She’s not doing Pop Rocks. She’s not.

Instead, she goes back to her sprinkles. She uses a sieve to separate the pieces that are too small from the larger bits. The result is a mixture of unevenly shaped sprinkles in all her different colors. They’re more vibrant than the original Pop-Tart sprinkles, but Rey admits to the camera: “I kind of like them that way. I said we were doing a little more magic for this one. I feel like the bold colors help with that.”

Then it’s another delightful day of making pastries. She makes the dough, rolls it out, cuts it into pieces—she adjusts the size a little this time, since her last batch was a little bit smaller than the originals.

Rey uses her cut up silpat stencil to spread the filling on the bottom halves of her pastry. She docks holes in the top half, and uses some egg wash to connect them. It’s not really a complicated process, but it does take quite a bit of time, and Rey’s a perfectionist. 

Then the tray goes into the oven. Once they’ve finished baking, Rey pulls them out of the oven and lets them cool. Meanwhile, she makes another batch of royal icing, this time adding in some purple food dye to get it to a light lavender color. 

She spreads her frosting across her cooled Pop-Tarts, first by piping a clean rectangular border, then filling it in with icing. While it’s still drying, she adds in her sprinkles, and takes approximately eight million pictures from different angles with her phone. She has several social media accounts to help the marketing team maintain, after all. After she sends the photos to the marketing email, she turns back to Finn.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud of anything in my life,” she says, holding up one of the pastries to the camera. 

“You still have to put them in a toaster,” Finn points out.

She groans, but is already headed off to get the toaster while her camera crew follows. What follows is a very tense 90 seconds where Rey tries not to bite at her fingernails while she waits. 

“It worked! The icing didn’t burn or bubble or get weird!” There may be some jazz hands involved in Rey’s celebration of her success. Never let it be said that Rey doesn’t understand her audience. 

Kaydel comes up behind Rey and wraps her arms around her waist, peeking over her and resting her chin on Rey’s shoulder. “They look incredible.”

“You wanna try one?” Rey asks. She made eight for this batch for this exact reason.

“Um, yes,” Kaydel says. “I absolutely, 100% want to try one.”

“I’d like to try one too,” a familiar voice says, and Rey’s blood freezes. She doesn’t turn around, and she hopes to all that is good in the world that Finn has the wisdom to not use the current footage of her sure-to-be-alarmed facial expression.

Rey plasters on a smile. “Of course,” she says, turning to Leia Organa-Solo, Editor in Chief of RA magazine and Benjamin Solo’s  _ mom _ . “I’d love for you to try one.”

It’s not unusual for Leia to stop by at the end of one of Rey’s videos. She stopped by at the end of Almond Joy and said some very kind things. It  _ is _ however, unusual for Leia to stop by after her son invited Rey over for Thanksgiving and Rey hasn’t actually spoken to him since said invitation was given.

“I do need to talk to Rey,” Leia says, quickly adding in: “After I have a taste, of course.”

Rey’s stomach flips, and she’s pretty sure it’s not because Leia is tasting her Pop-Tarts. Finn gets a really nice clip of Leia commenting on the flakey texture of the pastry and the delicious flavor of the jam, and then Leia wraps her arm around Rey’s waist, waives her hand in a dismissive manor at Finn, and starts to lead Rey away from her workstation and her camera crew.

Once they’re out of the earshot of Rey’s colleagues, Leia says: “You finished up a little early this week.”

“It was a fairly straightforward recreation,” Rey says.

“What do you have on your plate for the rest of the week?” asks Leia.

“Some voiceover work,” Rey answers, “And marketing set up an interview for me on some other  _ YouForce _ talk show that films Friday night.” That had come through her email this morning. She’s still reeling a bit that she could be even remotely well known enough to be visiting other  _ YouForce _ channels.

“Baking Up A Storm?” Leia asks, “By that Trooper woman?”

“I think she goes by Phasma,” Rey says.

Leia actually wrinkles her nose, which is not an expression Rey has seen very often on Leia. “Awful woman,” she says under her breath. Then, at Rey’s raised eyebrow, she clarifies, “She’s mostly in the game to sell her hideous aprons and tee-shirts. She doesn’t care about the actual art of cooking.”

Huh. Rey had no idea Leia had an opinion on the subject. She wonders if Leia okay-ed the interview, or if marketing went around her.

“She’s been trying to get us to invest in her show for the past year,” Leia says. “I’m not inclined to do so, and what she wants for part-ownership is ridiculous.”

“Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?” Rey asks.

“Actually, no,” Leia says, “I wanted to invite you over for Thanksgiving myself, since I think Ben was a terrible choice for a go-between. I’m not sure how he presented the invitation to you, but it’s a small gathering. My husband, myself, Benjamin, of course, and Luke will usually show up. We spend the early morning and afternoon in the kitchen, have the meal around three. I usually have beaten Han in two games of backgammon by five, around which time Benjamin starts on his annual apple pie. The celebration lasts until the next day, when we spend the morning and afternoon making and decorating Christmas cookies.”

Rey’s stomach is still doing flips.

“I wanted to explain,” Leia says, “That I had been considering asking you, even though I had no idea of your plans. Poe has been coming for the past few years, of course. I mentioned it to Ben, and he said he was thinking of bringing you himself, so I let him ask. That was my mistake. We have two guest rooms in the Condo, one with two twin beds and one with a full mattress. The second one obviously will be yours if you choose to stay. I know Benjamin offered to drive you.”

It all sounds so good, and Leia is so nonchalant about the whole thing. And if has been invited before, then it’s not about her specifically, or her not having anywhere to go.

And she still really, really wants to.

“Thank you,” Rey says. “I’ll think about it and let Ben know my answer.”

“Perfect,” Leia says. One of her arms is still wrapped around Rey’s waist and she gives her a slight squeeze. “We’ll see you there.”

She’s halfway down the hall before Rey realizes Leia responded as if she just said  _ yes _ and not  _ I’ll let you know _ . Rey shakes her head. She doesn’t think many people tell Leia Organa-Solo  _ no _ .

Later, after slugging through the snowy slush covering her path from the El to her apartment, Rey makes a decision.

_ Okay, _ Rey texts Ben,  _ I’ll spend Thanksgiving with you. _

His response is a single heart emoji.

Rey’s barely able to calm herself down to be able to sleep that night.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay first: [Watch Claire Saffitz from the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen Make Gourmet Almond Joy."](https://youtu.be/BSWsCQ5bGvo)  
> [And watch Amiel show you every way to cook a steak.](https://youtu.be/Jpd_CUX2o98)
> 
> Also, I have no update schedule, three chapters is a guess, and the rating is subject to change. Happy Reylo Week, kiddos! Come say hi to me on [tumblr.](http://andyouweremine.tumblr.com)


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